Changing times of International law: India’s agreements with the UK and the EU

By Ricky Chopra, Advocate

As an international lawyer for more than two and a half decades now, I can express some things with carefully distilled experience of working for multinational corporations and international organizations. One of them is that a new shift is taking place with frantic speed toward a new world architecture in international trade. The latest agreements to examine in this regard are the India-EU Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and the India-UK Comprehensive Economic & Trade Agreement (CETA) that will commence to see the light of the day in just weeks to come. These documents work a shield against the brutal trade attacks by the likes of China that can injure the global goods distribution streams within a horribly short span. While there are impactful bilateral agreements in place between India and some European nations, we shall discuss them some other time. The aforesaid FTA just pushed India into the frontier of EU-connected distribution streams as it gets rid of tariffs on ninety-nine point five percent of export items to the EU from India. Parallelly, the CETA provides Indian businesses to set foot in the largest food markets in the UK. In this piece, I shall very briefly explain the legal frameworks around these agreements and the practicality of such arrangements in the new world order.

Now, once India has beaten textile manufacturing competitors like Bangladesh, Vietnam and Pakistan, we can enjoy the steep hike in employment in this sector. The pharmaceutical and the heavy machinery sector as well will meet a similar future – more reason to cheer.  The most wonderful thing about these agreements is that the provisions within them are drawn within the strict contours of the WTO guidelines of IP, GI and financial ethics structure. CETA’s Double Contributions Conventions on social security is still to prove itself as a pivotal beneficial platform for a seamless labor mobility.

These agreements also make room for any unforeseen global disruptions like pandemics and wars by providing protection through in-built provisions about stable supply chain de-risking mechanisms.

Additionally, these agreements are a world announcement of sorts that India is a befitting future alternative to China in large scale manufacturing. However, time will tell if the dispute-solving mechanisms like arbitration clauses (still waiting ) shall have the force of law required when well-intentioned nations change the rules for fair play.

Technical barriers, ratification speed and human rights safeguards are other important elements still trying to find place in the schemes of the things discussed above.

As a conclusion, I can say with enormous confidence that these agreements shall provide the UK and the EU with tremendous benefits in diversifications of their business ambitions, and India with MSME abundance.