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N° PC 47

ELECTRONIC MAIL

Brussels, 20September 2010

Circulation:ESF – Policy Committee

47th ESF Policy Committee Meeting

- Brussels, 30th September 2010 -

VIII.ESF Position Paper on EU/INDIA FTA negotiations

Mr. Edward Bowles, ESF Rapporteur on EU-India FTA and the Secretariat had a meeting last week with Maria koidu from the Services & Investment Unit in DG Trade, who isnow in charge of the services chapter of the EU-India FTA negotiations, since end of July when Mr. Tomas Baert left for the EC Delegation in Geneva.

The optimistic calendar for the negotiations has been presented to us as follow:

  • The Chief Negotiators (Ignacio Garcia-Bercero and his counterpart) will meet next week in Delhi (23-24 Sept).
  • The next Round of negotiations is scheduled for the week 4-8 October in Delhi
  • David O’Sullivan and his counterpart will meet the third week of October
  • EU Commissioner De Gucht and India Trade Minister Sharma should meet in November to prepare the Summit
  • The EU-India Summit is now fixed on 10 December 2010 in Brussels.

The Indian negotiators need to go back to the Inter-ministerial Economic Committee (chaired by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh) to get a revised negotiating mandate, since the first mandate was rather week and did not allow India negotiators to give much. They need to identify in which areas they might need to introduce new legislation due to the FTA negotiations and present their case before this committee, which gathers important members of the government cabinet. But they will do than only if they are confident that India will also get back interesting concessions in exchange.

As you know, one of the offensive interests of India is Mode 4 (movement of natural persons).Various sources told us that the discussions are not going that well in the Trade Policy Committee Services & Investments and that many Member States are holding their cards, but this might have a consequence that India negotiators will not ask for a revised mandate, et might have therefore an impact on the whole negotiations.

The members of the Trade Policy Committee Services & Investments(with whom ESF has regular informal meetings) already met twice on this issue, will meet next week again and possibly again on 29th September.

It was therefore agreed by the Rapporteur, the Secretariat and ESF Chairman of the Policy Committee that ESF should send a letter to the TPC Services & Investments on this specific matter, without waiting for the final ESF Position Paper on the EU-India FTA. Given that time was the essence for this letter to have any impact and given that the letter is repeating the long-decided policy of ESF on this subject, the Chairman decided that there wasno need to run a member’s consultation. You will find attached copy of the letter that has been sent today to the Chairman of the TPC Services and Investment.

Your comments are more than welcomed. We will discuss this issue at the next Policy Committee meeting due to take place on 30th September as a separate item on the agenda as well as when the Chief Negotiator of that crucial FTA for the European services sectors will brief us.

Yours sincerely,

Pascal KERNEIS

Managing Director

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