India eyes quick EU trade deal as Trump pushes higher tariffs

EU trade chief Maros Sefcovic will be in India this week for the 13th round of FTA talks

India is close to finalising large parts of its free trade agreement with the European Union (EU), Indian Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal has said.

His remarks come ahead of a visit from top EU trade officials for further negotiations, starting 12 September.

The talks are happening as US President Donald Trump has called on EU leaders to impose 100% tariffs on India and China for buying Russian oil. The US has imposed a 50% tariff on goods from India, which includes a 25% penalty for its transactions with Russia.

India and the EU relaunched free trade discussions in 2021 after a prolonged pause and are working to get a deal through by the end of this year.

On Tuesday, Mr Goyal said that 60-65% of the chapters of the trade agreement had already been finalised, news agency ANI reports.

By the time my counterpart Mr Maros Sefcovic, the EU trade commissioner, and Mr Christophe Hansen, the EU agriculture commissioner, come to India, I think we will be quite set to try and conclude the agreement substantially, he added.

EU trade negotiators arrived in Delhi earlier in the week to prepare for the talks. Additionally, a 28-member delegation of the EUs Political and Security Committee (PSC) also arrived on Wednesday to discuss key foreign policy, security and defence-related matters in the lead up to the upcoming EU-India Summit next year.

Earlier this week, the naval forces of India and EU conducted their first coordinated exercise in the Indian Ocean to strengthen maritime security.

Besides FTA negotiations, officials from the PSC are expected to discuss Indias role in mediating in the Russia-Ukraine war, local media reported.

The diplomatic engagement is taking place as Polish armed forces say they have downed Russian drones that entered its airspace, marking the first time a member of the Nato military alliance has directly engaged Russian assets in its airspace since the Ukraine war started in 2022.

Over the weekend, Ukraine also saw its heaviest aerial bombardment since the war began, with Kyivs main government building getting struck by a Russian missile - an attack seen as a major increase in aggression by the Kremlin.

Amid the escalation, Trump called on the EU to hit China and India with tariffs of up to 100% as part of his efforts to force Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war, sources told the BBC.

His request follows remarks from US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who said that Washington was prepared to escalate economic pressure on Russia but needed stronger European backing.

The EU has said it would end its dependency on Russian energy - but around 19% of its natural gas imports still come from Russia. It has also proposed a fresh round of sanctions on Russia, which is likely to affect Russian oil refined in India.

India has consistently maintained that it will continue to buy oil from wherever it gets the best deal in order to protect the interests of its 1.4 billion people.

Despite their differences, India and EU are expected to press ahead with trade negotiations.

Some 6,000 EU companies operate in India and the bloc is Indias largest trading partner in goods, with bilateral trade reaching $135bn (£107bn) in 2022-23 and nearly doubling in the last decade.

Last year, India also signed a $100bn free trade agreement with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) - a group of four European countries that are not members of the European Union - after almost 16 years of negotiations.

The India-UK FTA came into effect this July.

Earlier this year, on her visit to India, EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said the FTA with EU will be finalised by the end of the year and the deal would be the largest of its kind anywhere in the world.