The proposal, tabled by the Commission on Friday, seeks Council authorisation to sign and conclude the pact. If cleared, the agreement will still require the European Parliament’s consent and a separate Council decision on conclusion before it enters into force.
Commenting on X, EU ambassador-designate to India Jean-Eric Paquet said: “Fantastic news! EU-India FTA just moved one step closer to the finish line.”
The Commission said the EU and India already trade goods and services worth more than €180 billion a year, supporting close to 800,000 EU jobs. Once in force, the agreement will eliminate or reduce tariffs on 96 per cent of EU goods exports to India, saving European exporters around €4 billion annually in duties. On the Indian side, the deal grants preferential access to 97 per cent of EU tariff lines, covering 99.5 per cent of trade value, with more than 70 per cent of tariff lines seeing immediate duty elimination.
Negotiations
Friday’s move follows the political conclusion of negotiations on January 27, when Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President António Costa and Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the deal at the 16th India-EU Summit in New Delhi. The talks for this had run, with a near-decade suspension between 2013 and 2022, since 2007. The negotiated text has since undergone legal revision and translation into the EU’s official languages ahead of Friday’s submission.Commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal, who has shuttled between Brussels and European capitals through the year pressing for an early signing, said on September 4 that all 27 EU member states backed the pact, calling the unanimity unusual by the bloc’s standards. “I assure you it has been deftly negotiated, protecting sensitive sectors on both sides. Therefore, there has been not one murmur of dissent against the India-EU FTA,” Goyal had said, addressing an India-Belgium business dialogue in Mumbai.
Political Consensus
Von der Leyen and Modi had earlier committed, on the sidelines of the G7 Summit in Evian, to sign the agreement by the end of the year and to expand defence cooperation and connectivity initiatives, including the India-Middle East-Europe Corridor.Because the agreement falls within the EU’s exclusive competence on trade, its ratification does not require separate approval from national parliaments of the 27 member states, unlike mixed agreements that touch on areas of shared competence. Trade analysts have estimated that once political consensus exists among the Commission, Council and Parliament, as officials on both sides have repeatedly signalled through the year, the remaining approval steps could move relatively quickly, with the full process from signature to entry into force typically taking about a year.
The pact makes the EU India’s 22nd FTA partner and is being billed as the EU’s largest-ever trade agreement by trade value, with the two economies together accounting for close to a quarter of global GDP. Along with the trade deal, the two sides had also signed a Security and Defence Partnership at the January summit, the EU’s third in Asia after Japan and South Korea.
The Council’s authorisation, once granted, would clear the way for the formal signing ceremony that both sides have targeted before the close of 2026.
Published on September 11, 2026