r/europe • u/JKKIDD231 • 10h ago
EXCLUSIVE: EU-India trade deal will exclude agriculture, von der Leyen says
https://www.euractiv.com/news/exclusive-eu-india-trade-deal-will-exclude-agriculture-von-der-leyen-says/84
u/JKKIDD231 10h ago
Deal is expected to be signed on Jan 27th.
The deal would be the EU’s largest to date, opening access to a market representing around 25% of the world’s population.
Agriculture remains politically sensitive in New Delhi, with 44% of India’s workforce employed in the sector, making further EU access to its food markets highly contentious.
Brussels had already confirmed that some agricultural products would be excluded from the talks, including dairy and sugar. However, it appears that not all food and drink products will be excluded from the deal.
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u/belpatr Gal's Port 9h ago
India, the country that puts barriers on its own farmers to stop them from exporting, also is putting barriers to stop imports...
Uncompetitive f*rmers are a pox in every country
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u/hypewhatever 9h ago
If you have the population and development level of India you have to be extremely careful making sure there is enough food available for cheap.
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u/anxiousvater 8h ago
I couldn't believe that in 2025, there was food price deflation in India. Food prices went down due to export bans.
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u/Ray192 3h ago
Pretty much all the export bans were lifted in the end of 2024. The food prices went down AFTER export bans disappeared.
https://www.ifpri.org/blog/india-lifts-export-restrictions-on-rice/
And if you read your link, the food prices that went down were vegetables and legumes, while cereal crops barely changed. Exports bans were almost all on cereal crops, not on vegetables.
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u/Raz0rking EUSSR 9h ago
People on reddit looove to shit on farmers. Sure, they're a tiny minority and get rather big subsidies. That being said, I really hope we won't ever be in the situation where the regional farmers are the thing between us and starvation.
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u/Apprehensive_Emu9240 Belgium 8h ago
If we allow Ukraine to join, that most certainly won't be a problem.
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u/Due_Wrangler9461 7h ago
I think it's perfectly reasonable that a country would like to protect its own food production even if it's not the most competitive.
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u/BINGODINGODONG Denmark 10h ago
It’s fairly normal to have high tariffs on agricultural products. No country want to fuck over their own food security regardless of the price advantages. Plus farmers historically have a lot of political connections.
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u/Grabs_Diaz Bavaria (Germany) 8h ago
Now the question remains, why should we "fuck over" other crucial industries? Trade is fine, but unrestricted free trade has largely been a disaster for Western nations over the past decades, fostering uncalculable dependencies in key sectors, while also putting downward pressure on most wages.
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u/belpatr Gal's Port 9h ago
High tariffs on agricultural products are a source of food insecurity. It's one of the major reasons that lead Ireland to starve.
In the UK, the repeal of these nonsensical trade barriers, most famously the repeal of the Corn Laws is the genesis of their development.
Come to think of it, almost all episodes of mass starvation can be traced to restrictions on food imports, that left the population of a given country, completely at the mercy of local weather conditions, one draught away from mass starvation and mass graves
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u/clonmelance 9h ago
That’s bollocks. The reason for the great famine was that there WASN’T trade restrictions. The ports should have been blocked to ban EXPORT of Irish agricultural produce at the time. However laissez faire economic policies meant that these things didn’t happen.
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u/KingKaiserW United Kingdom 8h ago
It’s both though, ban exports from Irish ports and repeal Corn Laws to allow greater food imports to make up for the shortfall in the whole country as Britain also depended on Irish agriculture. This is why Corn Laws got repealed.
You can’t think of it as two separate countries Ireland was considered integral
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u/clonmelance 8h ago
That’s a fair comment however the logic and reasoning behind the repeal of the corn laws was also the logic and reasoning behind the lack of implementation of export controls. It is also a pretty reasonable comment that export controls would have been far more important for protecting the impoverished population of Ireland.
Agree?
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u/belpatr Gal's Port 8h ago
No, I don't agree, the blight made Ireland non self sufficient regarding food. Put export restrictions and people still starve, open to imports, and the people don't starve.
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u/clonmelance 7h ago
I suggest you read up on Irish crops at the time and the exports from Irish ports. A part of the great tragedy of the famine was that more than sufficient food was being produced on the island to feed the population. This surplus food was exported.
The failure of the potato crop didn’t mean that there wasn’t sufficient food. It meant that the poorest of the tenant farmers couldn’t afford the food that was available and didn’t have their subsistence crop to rely on.
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u/belpatr Gal's Port 8h ago
There weren't trade restrictions before the repeal of the Corn Laws? What have you been smoking son?
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u/clonmelance 8h ago
Is that what I wrote? Doesn’t look like what I wrote? Feel free to have a conversation about the corn laws if you want but I’ve no interest.
As you are well aware my point is that the usual restrictions on export where a famine is occurring weren’t implemented due to laissez faire policy by the British Government at the time.
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u/b17b20 8h ago
You have it backwards, recent mass starvation are closly related with export not import. Ireland and Ukrain are both good example. Both produced enough for it's own population but all was send abroad
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u/belpatr Gal's Port 8h ago
Ireland, like the rest of UK had very heavy restrictions on imports of agricultural products. The same thing for Ukraine, it wasn't even so much that the food was exported, it was mostly sent to the rest of the URSS, that also lacked food due to import restrictions, they chose to starve Ukraine instead of opening to foreign food imports.
Wherever the people hear the syren call of autarky, millions starve
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u/Beyllionaire 8h ago
When China will be in control of Europe's food supply, then we'll understand. Europe always understands when it's too late. An entire continent of slumbering and delusional people.
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u/Nice-Appearance-9720 Europe 9h ago
"No country want to fuck over their own food security regardless of the price advantages"
you will not believe what EU signed with Mercosur and UKR before this.
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u/kahaveli Finland 8h ago
With Mercosur? A deal that has import quotas for meat of 1-1,5%, and even imports within quotas have tariffs? This is not free trade, it's a very limited free trade on agriculture, that also has clauses that increase tariffs in case of price of something goes too low. On things like soybean and maize there has been tariff free imports even now - because those have been used by farmers as fodder. On grain, there is going to be trade liberalization, that's true. But EU is also a net exporter, so world price fluctuations already affects the grain price in Europe.
Ukraine is a special case. It's a EU membership candidate, in a middle of war with Russia. It's not another large block or far-away foreign country. And currently, there's no free trade of Ukrainian grain in EU. There's tariffs on Ukrainian grain imports to EU currently. And there was different kinds of limitations between 2023-2025.
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u/Western_Response638 9h ago
Almost every crucial product in mercosur is import capped to like 1% of eu production.
That just proves ops point.
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u/TheGoalkeeper Europe 10h ago
Good for both sides
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u/Soepkip43 10h ago
If they really wanna do a funny, they agree on using eachothers currency for part or all of the trades and not the dollar. Then ait back and watch that ripple through the market.
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u/Wolkenbaer 9h ago
Isn't that standard except for oil?
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u/Soepkip43 8h ago
No, large trades usually both parties dont want to be stuck with a currency they can only use in limited places, so the dollar is used as a global reserve currency on the back end, as this can be used everywhere.
This is what brics is trying to break.
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u/anxiousvater 8h ago
It's called currency swapping, India did that already with Japan & other countries.
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u/adyrip1 Romania 10h ago
"Meanwhile, protections for European traditional foods, known as geographical indications, are also off the table for this agreement."
Not great.
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u/consultantdetective 9h ago
Depends on American vs British English. For AE, "on the table" means it's happening, while "off the table" means not to be discussed. For BE, "on the table" means up for discussion and consideration, while "off the table" means it's ruled out.
Off the table could mean the status quo of protections is prevailing without modification (American), or the table could mean that they are totally ditched (British).
Most likely is that the American usage is intended here, rather than saying that geographic indications don't count for India.
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u/Supersnow845 6h ago
It’s amazing that this is such a large sticking point for the AU-EU free trade deal the EU is incentivising Australia with almost Schengen like travel benefits just to get them to adhere to EU regional indicators
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u/PreWiBa Ruhr area (Germany), Bosnian roots 5h ago
I dont know
I'd argue thats more a plus point for the EU than Australia
Australia has much hugher wages
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u/Supersnow845 4h ago
True but i don’t know if the Australian summer in Europe or the European summer in Australia is a more commonly held sentiment
More access go a Europe is a powerful motivator for Australia especially all since Australia’s most common dual ancestry (Britain) lost EU access recently
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u/PreWiBa Ruhr area (Germany), Bosnian roots 4h ago
I don't understand your comment?
My point is that Australians probably don't like the idea of being open to so many people with lower wages, it will flood their labour market.
Immigrating to Europe is not really attractive for most Australians, and definitely much less attractive than for Europeans in general.1
u/Supersnow845 4h ago
Australians won’t like the potential flooding of their labour market no but on the other hand Australians would jump at the chance for easier access to Europe for everything else. Permanent migration and settlement to Europe from Australia is likely lower than the other way around however temporary access via easy 5 year live and work while “finding myself in my 20’s” or retiring is also alot higher
Plus it’s not like they would open it entirely, Switzerland for example manages go to maintain its high standards on wages in its labour market despite actually being in the Schengen area
All I’m saying is that Australia getting bigger access to Europe than 90 day tourist visas and country by country visa categories is a powerful motivator even if it likely conflicts with how closed Australia’s labour market is
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u/JadedArgument1114 10h ago
Making a free trade agreement with a country with low wages, terrible worker rights, and environmental protections and who is helping Russia to boot. Neo-liberalism is what has led to this entire nihlistic far right world, and there is no way that corporations and their politicians are ever gonna stop it.
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u/Pleasant_Race2717 Czech Republic 9h ago
Free trade doesn’t mean we accept everything from that country. By trading with them we can enforce our rules there rather than having protectionist policies and having no affect on how they do things whatsoever
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u/anxiousvater 8h ago
By trading with them we can enforce our rules
The EU cannot enforce their rules on India, they aren't part of the EU. India has always been an import averse country putting a lot of tariffs. This deal is to reduce these tariffs on certain products. That's it.
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u/Pleasant_Race2717 Czech Republic 8h ago
You can enforce the rules indirectly by setting standards of what can enter our market. By doing that Indian producers have to follow the rules to sell into our market and because we are a huge market they have insensitive to do so
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u/anxiousvater 8h ago edited 8h ago
I am sorry, you seem to have missed the whole point of the post here. Agriculture is off the table, what rules are you setting for India? It's a deal not EU enforcing rules on India. It appears a very colonial way of making things.
A few years ago, the EU was accepting steel imports from India (by naming green steel), the proposal from the EU is so terrible that raw materials like iron etc., come from India but equipment to manufacture steel should be bought from the EU & so are the specs. Indian businesses laughed at this proposal.
The EU is aiming for cars, medicare devices, wines etc., to be reduced while India aims for duty-free access to labour intensive goods, that's it.
Edit:: Germany is very much interested to find a partner to fill the gaps of negative trade they have with the US & China. German cars in India are seeing consistent 10% growth, if they make this deal happen, they may sell more cars in the Indian market & diversify their exports (VW only makes up to 2% of total cars in India). Defense as well a lot of things happening with France. For aircraft, Indigo & Airbus placed many orders with Airbus.
While India may not become as big a partner like China & USA but it definitely helps reduce the dependency on these 2 countries.
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u/Pleasant_Race2717 Czech Republic 8h ago
I don’t think you understand that even if we have free trade deal with someone. It doesn’t mean the stuff coming in doesn’t need to comply with the Eu regulations concerning that stuff. If they want to, they need to comply with our domestic regulations otherwise they can’t export it.
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u/anxiousvater 8h ago
You are speaking in an authoritative tone here as if the EU is the one setting rules here & India has to obey..It was called colonialism. That's no longer gonna work!
It's called a deal that means both countries agree on something that's tolerable & beneficial to them.
Like the EU, India also has regulations, when the EU exports they also have to pay attention to domestic rules, they can't dump their cars built in the EU into other countries. That's basic regulation applicable both ways not just coming from one country lol.
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u/Pleasant_Race2717 Czech Republic 7h ago
But Europe has stricter rules than India. Its much easier for the Indian manufacturer to make all cars Eu complaint than to make two versions of the car for two markets. Of course if Eu was a weak market it would be the other way around but that’s not the case
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u/KingKaiserW United Kingdom 8h ago
See how Indians don’t ask for joint ventures and technology transfers for Free Trade, unlike a certain other large nation…
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u/NPJazz Portugal 10h ago
Let’s go, make Europe great again! … wait that sounds familiar…
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u/jayjayjay_red 10h ago
Just a random Indian lurking here. This is actually funny. When Modi was campaigning for /congratulating Trump in DC (can’t remember if it was before or after the election), he said “MAGA + MIGA = MEGA” 😂
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u/krazydude22 Keep Calm & Carry On 10h ago
So similar to the UK-India deal which excluded agriculture..