New Delhi, Feb 11 (IANS) The EU-India free trade agreement (FTA) — touted as “mother of all deals” — unveils the emerging silhouette of a post-US world order amid relentless threats to territorial sovereignty, punitive tariffs and the weakening of multilateral institutions, according to a recent report in The Guardian.
The trade deal announced recently by President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Council, Antonio Costa, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi promises to bring together about two billion consumers and a quarter of the world’s GDP.
Ravinder Kaur, professor of Asian studies at the University of Copenhagen, writes that the wide scope of the evolving India-EU partnership “suggests a move towards greater convergence in terms of the commitment to multilateral institutions, and cooperation in a range of areas of security and defence, research, mobility and connectivity, including enhanced engagement in the Indo-Pacific region”.
As the US withdraws to the western hemisphere, the Indo-Pacific region — once central to US engagement in Asia — is now more open to collaboration with the EU, she adds.
“The post-US world is already taking shape”, and the massive EU-India trade deal is one such example.
Brussels recently concluded a trade deal with the South American Mercosur trade bloc, with several more in the pipeline. According to the report, India has made agreements with the UK and New Zealand in the last few months.
“While ratification and implementation take time, and may even hit a roadblock or two (like the delay in the EU-Mercosur deal), it suggests a shift that is unmistakable,” write Kaur, adding that the “world, many outside the west have long dreamed about — of multipolarity, strategic autonomy, even de-dollarisation — is taking shape, first slowly and now rapidly”.
Meanwhile, India’s FTA concluded with the European Union last month, which could have pushed the US to make the trade deal with India, according to a South Asia expert at the Asia Society in New York.
“Though India-US trade negotiations were on for a while, the deal with the EU could have served as an impetus for the US to push forward”, Farwa Aamer, the director of South Asia Initiatives at the Asia Society Policy Institute (ASPI), said. “The timing is interesting as the deal comes straight after the EU-FTA”, she added.
