India, EU FTA talks progressing well but lots of work to be done, says EU official

The discussions on the Free Trade Agreement between India and the European Union (EU) have made "progress but a lot of work is still ahead of us", said European Union (EU) executive vice president Valdis Dombrovskis on Saturday.

There has been progress in the proposed free trade agreement (FTA) between India and EU, a lot of work is still left to be done, Dombrovskis said.

"Negotiations are proceeding at a good pace. We already had five rounds of negotiations. We recently exchanged the first market access offers with each other. So on the EU side, we are typically working on what we call deep and comprehensive free trade agreements covering a broad range of areas, including for example, sustainability, ensuring that our trade does not lead to environmental degradation or reduction of labour standards or other negative externalities," he said.

He acknowledged that while progress has been made in the FTA discussions, there are still several challenges which need to be addressed.

The EU official focussed on the untapped potential in the relationship between India and the EU.

"We share fundamental values and interests," he added.