 Welcome on behalf of Rosa Luxemburg-Stiftung's Brussels office as well as the Asia Department of Rosa Luxemburg-Stiftung. Also welcome on behalf of Ter Solidaire, which is co-hosting this webinar. My name is Florian Horn, I work for the Rosa Luxemburg Brussels office on trade policies of the European Union and will be guiding you through this seminar today. The European Commission is lately pushing a lot to conclude a number of free trade agreements that had been negotiated sometimes for quite a while. The negotiations between the EU and the South American trade bloc Mercosur received quite some media attention recently with government officials and policymakers from the EU traveling to the newly elected Lula government in Brazil. Less attention, however, is giving to the negotiations between India and the European Union. Meanwhile, India itself is also busy negotiating FTAs. The eighth round of negotiations between India and the United Kingdom is scheduled for later this month. The talks between India and the European Union on a free trade agreement started in 2007. Slowly progressed over a few years and then came to a halt in 2013. After a long silence and influenced by major shifts in the global geopolitical order, both parties are back on the negotiating table since June 2022 with a lot of optimism to conclude the deal by the end of this year. Separate negotiations to the free trade agreement are being held on investment protection as well as geographical indications. These negotiations were launched simultaneously. Next week here in Brussels, the fourth round of negotiations between EU and India will take place. But we have to assume that contradictions that stole the process of negotiations in 2013 have not disappeared. Therefore, it is worthwhile to discuss factors that may lead to a failure of the deal. And paradoxically, skepticism of free trade-oriented policies is growing in many places around the world. But at the same time, we hear a bit less from waves of people resisting against these free trade policies. So with this webinar, we also want to initiate a critical debate on how this trade deal, the EU-India deal, is potentially worsening the climate, the labor rights, quality and affordable public services, as well as data privacy. Therefore, the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung recently published two reports on the EU-India trade negotiations. One by Laura Verhecke, which is this one. You can download it from our website. The link is in the chat. And another one by Ranja Segupta, which is this one, also available for download from our website. And the link should be in the chat as well. The reports analyze the impact of the future free trade agreement on economic, social and political governance in India and the EU. On what workers and citizens can expect from the agreement and what effect it will have on the environment and access to services. So I'm very much honored to present our distinguished speakers for today. Yesterday, we all celebrated the International Women's Day, which was established by the way by Rosa Luxemburg's dear friend Clara Zetkin. And today we get started with Ranja and Laura, our distinguished speakers and authors of the report, who will present the papers published by the Stiftung. The Stiftung we say in German always, which would be in English, the foundation. After these presentations, there will be two expert comments. One by Dr. Biswad Siddhar and the other one by a member of the European Parliament, Helmut Scholz. And I'm very sorry to inform you that just this morning, Chachati Ghosh had to cancel her participation due to personal reasons. After the expert comments, there should be time for some discussion with you, the audience. I would like to ask you therefore to put your question and comments in the Q&A box so I can present them to our speakers. So please specify also which speaker or speakers you address on your contributions. Now let me go ahead by first introduce our first speaker, Ranja Singupta. Ranja is senior researcher with the Third World Network. She has a degree in economics from Jawaharlal Nauru University in India and her current work spans the UN 2030 Agenda, Finance for Development, Agricultural Institutions, International Trade and Investment Policymaking, as well as Globalization, Poverty and Inequality. So Ranja, with the EU-India FDA, what is the stake for Indian farmers, workers, small enterprises? Which sectors will be affected? Could you please present the main findings of your report, development, opportunities or challenges? Thanks Florian. Thanks for the opportunity to do the paper actually and also for the webinar invitation today. And I think in 10 minutes it will be difficult to present everything from the paper. So I will invite everyone to read it along with the other paper by Laura. But let me quickly just, I mean, I think maybe I will start with a few broad points about the agreement from, you know, from the Indian development perspective. And then let me touch upon a few specific sectors or issues. So of course we know, I mean, the EU-India FDA is one of the most ambitious with a very broad coverage among India's, you know, other trade deals that it's negotiating. And, you know, as Florian said, the first phase of negotiations was 2007 to 2013. But now it has come back, it's like bigger and it's more ambitious than before. There are newer chapters like e-commerce, energy, raw material, a bigger sustainable development chapter and so on. And also new chapters such as on MSMEs, but some of these chapters like the one on MSMEs, it actually promises something positive for MSMEs. But if you kind of really analyze it, it actually has nothing new or it does not really deliver any additional benefits for MSMEs. My second point is, as with other EU FTAs, we see that there is a deep intrusion into the partner's policy space. And I think for India, what my analysis showed is that, you know, India's policy space regarding, you name it, I mean seeds with geographical indications, its investment policy, raw material protection policy, sectoral development policies, government procurement, MSME policy, digital policy, IPRs, etc., all these policies could actually be constrained and restricted by this FTA. The third point is that, you know, as far as India's trade policy positioning is concerned, and I know Professor Dharr will speak more about this later. But if India had to actually agree to what in EU's demands are, and we can see what EU's demands are because EU already put its proposals in the public domain. But of course it has been helpful for us to analyze the text and I mean kind of try to understand what the implications will be. So if India had to agree to these demands, then India's own positioning at the WTO or in its other FTAs will be severely kind of already predetermined and also constrained because, for example, India has not agreed to join e-commerce negotiations either at the WTO or any of its FTAs. Same with government procurement. India has not agreed to, for example, this environment and trade agenda which is being brought in at the WTO. So for good or bad, it would mean that if India agrees to this in the FTA with the EU, India will have to then kind of slowly agree to these commitments at the WTO or in its other FTAs, right? So it would imply a clear shift in its trade policy positioning. And another interesting thing that I noted is that in the earlier phase of the negotiations, we had fought, I mean civil society organizations had fought against many of the demands made by the EU, most notably on intellectual property rights and access to medicine. So there was a lot of criticism of, you know, EU's demands for data exclusivity, patent term extension and so on, and the EU had then agreed to drop those demands. But now in this new phase, we see that all these demands have come back. The last point is that I think one thing that we should understand is that it is expected to increase inequality in India, because there would be a lot of shifts that would be needed. For example, you know, shifts between, for workers between sectors that they need to move from say, you know, agriculture sector to other sectors, there would be a lot of job adjustments. And with lower skills or resources will be, will have much more problem. There would be rural urban shifts and small farmers, low skilled semi skilled workers, MSMEs, patient groups, Indigenous populations, women, as a class, they will be having less access to healthcare, natural resources, technical services, finance and so on. So I think, and there are some reports which also point this out, for example, the European Parliamentary Research Service data paper, and they also point to that, you know, there could be a diverse impact on inequality in India. Let me now quickly just look at some specific issues, but I will just, you know, move at the speed of light, because there is, I mean, we do want time for discussion and the other speakers. One is critical issue is agriculture, dairy, fisheries in India, because we are expected to lower our import duties. You want access to wines and spirits, dairy, cereals, meat and poultry products and fisheries products. And you know, we are, we have mainly small holder farming and small scale fishers and dairy also we have cooperatives which have very small milk producers, many of them are women milk producers. So this cut in import duty is actually major challenge I think for these these constituencies. But at the same time, it's not clear whether India will be able to export more to the EU because of the standard barriers, and you also gives massive agricultural subsidies which cannot be discussed under the FDA, it can only be discussed in the WTO, and we haven't made any headway there. In addition, EUs, you know, demands related to intellectual property rights, for example, on agrochemicals, they want trips plus provisions, and then they want us to sign to the international agreement called UPROF 1991, you know, which protects actually seed companies rights, more than farmers rights. We've seen many cases actually that challenges you know these rights, company rights but by signing UPROF 1991, India will give away a lot of policy space again. And then EU also wants recognition of its geographical indications. And for a, for example, like, you know, just a sector like dairy processing is just beginning to grow. This GI will GI issue will be hitting them hard. In addition, investment provisions which could increase threat to land and natural resources would be an issue. And I think the last very important interesting chapter that EU has thrown up is the Sustainable Food Systems chapter, and that chapter really tries to get its partner countries to adopt a model of sustainable food system. And sustainable food system is something we all want. But if you look through what the content is, I am very worried. And I think that worry will be shared by Indian farmers groups and all at the same time, because you know what it says is it has, it says that it's compatible with the SDGs, but frankly I think it's a major conflict with SDG to which, for example, forward advances small farmers rights. But this character, this chapter that EU proposes actually says, for example, you know, an enterprise should be always profitable. Our small farmers are not, or that you minimize subsidies and maximize tax from the agriculture sector. And these are not targets and objectives for us of a sustainable food system. We think it could create and harm create barriers for our small farmers and small scale farming, and actually make them more uncompetitive, and therefore giving EU market advantage. In manufacturing, of course, India has interest in textile garments, leather chemicals, et cetera, machine parts, but the standards are again a huge barrier. And I think the MSMEs, the small and medium, small micro enterprises in India, they're actually interested in the EU deal, because many MSMEs actually operate in these segments, textile garment, leather and so on, gems and jewelry and so on. But I talked to the Federation of Indian SMEs, and they are very worried about the standards, because if the standards remain very high, and even the technical barriers remain kind of unreachable for Indian MSMEs, because they find it a major challenge now. I worked on the leather industry in India, and one of them told me that if they need to export to the EU, they need to have a specific machine, which is manufactured only in the EU, and it is very expensive. And this is part of the standard that EU sets. So they buy a machine from China and they cannot export to the EU. So the standard issue is huge. And I think another major concern for the MSMEs is government procurement. So with that, let me move on to the issue of government procurement. You know, this government purchase market, which is about 12 to 20% of the GDP in our countries. In India, I think it's more than 12%. And EU in all its FTS wants access to this market, right? It's a major, it's like a core demand, core mandate for the EU. But our countries, many developing countries, including India, they use it as a policy tool for giving markets for MSMEs, for women's self-help groups, for marginalized constituencies. And if India has to open up government procurement, and EU, it's like a core mandate. So they will probably not sign without access to the government procurement market. But only will this mean, as I said, that India has not given it in the WTO. So it would mean a pretty strong departure from India's current position. But also, will India be able to protect these affirmative policies for, you know, women's women and other marginalized constituencies and MSMEs. And we know that the MSME federations are extremely worried, and they are saying they will not, they do not want this FTA if it actually takes away these preferential treatment that they get under the government procurement market. I think e-commerce, this digital economy is big issue, because again, it will undermine India's position in other trade arenas. And EU wants free flow of data, EU wants that we should not impose any tariff on e-transmissions, no ban even on government, I mean no ban even on government data. Everything should be available for not only European companies, but globally for all companies. So it means that Indian government cannot use the data to, you know, create like specific preferences for specific constituencies. For example, Indian startup companies or, you know, that create its own data policy, so it will severely limit again its policy space. In investment remains a major concern because India, you know, had faced many ISDS cases and India's model bit, India now negotiates it has a model treaty and this what EU demands is actually very different from, in many aspects from that model treaty. And finally, I think EU is saying that it is, you know, very interested to secure women's rights, labor rights and sustainability and environment. But the problem is that the substantive provisions in the agreement. And this is what we have fought for, we fought against the investor state dispute settlement because it has a major problem for environmental conservation. But these are not changed. These are not taken away from the FDA. And for example, if you take the example of gender, you know, agriculture, dairy, these are gender sensitive sectors, then gender affirmative policies in government procurement or medicines for women under the IPR chapter and you know, ensuring access to medicine for women. These are compromised. So there are substantive provisions in the FDA, which compromise many of these so called objectives of the EU. So stand alone some chapters and some language will not correct that. So we see this as major doubles peak. And I will end here and we'll of course look forward to comments and questions. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much, Ranja. Also for keeping with the time limit. That was a really fast presentation with a lot of info. We tried to arrange it a bit in the next contributions. But we also heard already heard that government procurement is a very sensitive issue and that there's questions about how does it relate to India stance in other trade institutions like the WTO and so on. And what the EU says it is intending and what it really intends. And on that question, I guess we have a very good expert. Now, that would be Laura Ferreke. Hi, Laura. Hello. Hello. She's a former trade campaign on activists who is based in Brussels, but she also teaches you trade policies in little Catholic University, and is independent research on you trade deals for NGOs trade unions, and also of course political foundations. Laura, you wrote the other report for the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung titled you India trade deal business as usual. Can you elaborate a bit on what is the EU heading to and Laura just started her PowerPoint, and I will just shut up and give her the time to speak. Go ahead. I didn't mean to shut you up. Welcome everyone to the webinar and thank you also for the opportunity to look into the EU India trade deal. Just to pick up on what I was saying, I really agree with her. There's, there's a whole notion of inequality is important because sometimes we think about what's going to be the impact in the EU and in India. On both sides, we see big business winning and a lot of inequality in both sides and it's important to think about this. I've been asked to answer this is the report and I've been asked to answer two questions which will be the sectors will be impacted in the EU, and how can civil society respond to this. So, as Rania was saying there's a big thing about the digital sector, it's one of the main offensive interests of India. So, India would like to have access to the EU also for its own digital companies for its softwares for its engineers for its companies to be able to also work in the EU market. What it means is that we could see for instance in the health sector, some jobs being outsourced in India. So this is already something that has been witnessed with doing the negotiations between the UK and India. So there's a big interest for some medical jobs to actually be made by Indian workers, and I'm sure Indian workers can be very good radiologists but it does raise the questions about the jobs that will be lost in the EU. So the idea will be you could for instance do an x-ray in Romania, and it will be a doctor based in India that will be analyzing it and then you'll receive the results next. The next day on your mobile phone, which will make it maybe faster, cheaper, but it does raise the questions about what it means for the jobs and also how the jobs will be made in India. And it's the same thing with the IT sector. India would like to have much more engineers to come and work in the EU, and the whole question is how and what kind of conditions will they come in. So if we allow more Indian IT engineers to come to the EU, will they have the same working conditions, the same rights as EU workers? Because we don't want this trade agreement to open like another labor market, you know, like the Indian engineers if they come and work in the EU should be treated like EU workers. So there's a whole questions also about about labor and we know that this is something that is very sensitive with some sort of member states and we know also for instance on the negotiations between the UK and India. This is a main stumbling block where the UK is not willing to allow for more work permits. In the agricultural sector, so as Rania was saying the EU is like he would like to export more, especially more milk, which makes no sense. I remember not long ago a friend of mine told me it's like we would want to export more pizzas to India, you know, to Italy, sorry, sending more milk to India doesn't make sense because India has a very big milk sector. And it also employs, as you were saying Rania, a lot of women on small farms and small cooperatives. So it's a well-developed sector already in India and the EU would like to sell some milk from the EU from big business subsidized agricultural big business to India. So India will also like to export some of its agricultural products to the EU, and in this sense it will be mostly rice, sugar and grains which India would like to export to the EU. And again, as Rania was saying here we have a problem with standards where it's very funny how the EU always talks about free trade and when you look into the details there's a lot of technical barriers to trade and there's a lot of standards and norms which actually make it difficult for companies, small companies to export to the EU. So here in this case, that's what India is likely to ask for more rice, sugar and grains exports to the EU, whether it's going to get it, it's a different question because it will all depend also on understand it. Also textiles as you were saying Rania, India is likely to ask for more textile exports to the EU and this will also have an impact in terms of jobs in the EU in the textile sector. There was an impact assessment in 2009 and there was a slight decline in the sectors in the EU, mostly apparel and lever. And again here the idea is not to have a competition between EU jobs and Indian jobs, the idea is what kind of jobs are we talking about. So increasing the lever production, the apparel production in India for exports to do it to the EU, who does it benefit are we talking about big business that actually really badly employs women in a very precarious way. Or are we talking about small and medium enterprise, which can actually give a decent job to their workers so that's that's for the moment what we're likely to see is mostly big companies that will actually export more to the EU, but will not pay better their employees so it has a, this is a problem for India. I mean there's not much that I can tell you as Rania was saying, we have a lot of information because there's the EU has a lot of textual proposals online. Yes, so the EU shows the documents the first documents that they put on the table with India we have them online but this is not the end result of the agreement. We don't know exactly what is really being negotiated. There's still a lot that we do not know. There are parallel discussions happening where there's no transparency at all. So the trade and technology council between India and the EU is going to be set up where you'll see politicians and trade negotiators regularly meeting. This is already happening between the EU and the US, and we have no idea what was going on but we know that business big business so here. I'm quoting business Europe which is the main lobby organization for the biggest companies operating in the EU, and to them this is a way to get political input into technical work. So they're also parallel political discussions that are not being transparent at all and I will have a significant impact on the trade deal. So what kind of demands to civil society raise in those negotiations. Well, I think, as Rania was saying, the EU is really talking a lot about greening its trade deal it talks a lot about chapter on trade and sustainable development. And the whole idea would be that if you had a strong chapter on sustainable development, you would have lesser impact of the trade deals on people and the planet. The thing is trade and sustainable development chapters they do not change the patterns of trade. So, if we have more and more exports of milk from the EU to the India, or if we have more textile being sent to the EU. Those are things that are not being changed by a trade and sustainable development chapters and all trade negotiators have a mandate to open up markets for EU companies in India. And trade negotiators have a mandate to open up markets for Indian big business mostly. And unless this doesn't change, you can have any annexes you want and any trade and sustainable chapters you want. You won't change the core objective of this deal. And that's why what you need. We need to ask is not this kind of trade deal we need to deal, maybe. But if we need it is in the spirit of cooperation and solidarity, not in an idea that it's only about offensive and defensive interests. I mean, you have the link for the report. You can contact me always and I'm looking forward to hear your questions. Thank you so much Laura. Also for mentioning what can be done by civil society to critically assess these kind of agreements and to again also mention what also ranja said that sustainable chapters are not changing the patterns of trade, which are having often very negative effects on especially small scale traders or producers. I had a very short drop out during Laura's presentation about 1020 seconds, but probably I was the only one. Because I didn't hear from anyone else. So let's hope I didn't hear either. I mean, I think she she dropped off. I didn't hear also for a few seconds. But it was anyway very short. So I guess we got everything that was of most importance from her presentation. Now we will go ahead with Dr. Biswa Gida. He's former professor at the Center for Economic Studies and planning in to war who la narrow university no daily the second time I hope I got the name of the university right before joining the university he was director general of research and information system for development countries I think tank of the Ministry of External Affairs. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Center for WTO studies of the government of India, and he was head of the Center for several years. He had served as a senior consultant in the planning commission of India. He had served as member of the Indian delegation in multilateral treaty negotiations, including the World Trade Organization, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the World Intellectual Property Organization and the convention on biological diversity. He nominated an expert groups for several intergovernmental organizations. That's a very impressive list. So I'm very pleased to have you here Biswa Gida. Welcome. No. Okay. Yeah, as we said before, we would like to know a bit more from you about what India's interest in current trade politics are which rolled us the EU India FDA play in these, but also since we had to cancel recently, we would be very pleased. And we asked this watch it on a short notice to also lower it a bit more on a broader view on India's economic development and why it stands so take your time please the floor is yours. Thank you. Thank you Florian. It's a pleasure to be here and participating in this very interesting discussion. I've not changed to, you know, from giving a more focused assessment of the proposals that are on the table from the European Union side, because we still don't know anything about what the government of India is thinking about these negotiations. Really, you know, in complete darkness about what Indian Indian government stand would be but many of us who have dealt with these negotiations these FTAs earlier, we have, we have some idea as to which way these positions would go. And some of that was reflected in Ranja's presentation in when she talked about all the concerns from different sections of the stakeholders so really you know that is something that at the end of the day the government may actually reflect on that and take a take a position based on the concerns that Ranja had expressed. Now let me give you a brief background as to how we came to begin the U, India FTA and many other FTAs that are currently being negotiated. It's also important to understand, you know, why we started doing this because immediately prior to commencing or recommencing the negotiations, India had actually taken an isolationist position in the context of the COVID pandemic. The government had announced the policy of, you know, the Hindi is Atma Nirbharat and the English translation is self-reliance. Of course, many, you know, people in the government or close to the government have vehemently argued that this is not the interpretation of what Atma Nirbharat or self-reliance, you know, they don't want to sort of give that kind of interpretation. But the reality is that India became inward looking and this started even before the COVID pandemic, kind of a downturn since 2018 and there have been a lot of demands by different industry groups, especially the larger industries, like for instance textile and clothing, a range of other manufacturing sectors to raise tariffs on manufacturing imports. So it was a very interesting kind of a phase because almost more than one and a half decades prior to that, the Indian, in India, tariffs on manufacturing products had been consistently coming down. And, you know, and suddenly there was a, not only there was a, not only were breaks applied at that point, there was a reversal of the entire protectionist policies. Our average tariffs went up, especially because of higher manufacturing tariffs. In India, agricultural tariffs have already been high, they have always been high, they remain high. And the important, you know, since I'm talking about tariffs at this point, let me also mention India, the major instruments of policy still remains tariffs. Now, this is very unlike many of the other trade partners of India, where tariffs have almost become passing. And, you know, the trade barriers have moved elsewhere. You know, we have, we're now seeing the emergence of a lot of these non-tariff measures, standard is another thing that Ranjia was talking about. But India is still heavily dependent on tariffs. So, so given this, given this kind of a stance, why did, you know, India begin negotiating? There were about eight FTAs that were listed by the government in December 21. And so there was, you know, from starting from Australia, India FTA to the European United Arab Emirates, a whole lot of others. Now, my understanding is that this was a period where, you know, this was post the COVID. And thanks to all the all the stimulus that were given, given by the advice. India's exports started significantly. And in our financial year, 21-22, our exports reached a record level of more than $400 billion. Now, exports, India and exports have been well below $400 billion, they've been struggling to reach $350 billion. And suddenly, you know, we have an increase of almost $100 billion in one year, in one financial year. So it's natural to expect the government to be extremely upbeat and very confident that, you know, having got a huge market access in that period. The government I think was confident that, you know, we can do these trade deals and then use whatever they thought was the power of Indian industry. And also agricultural exports went up. But this was the time to strike big and started doing, you know, sort of engaging in these trade negotiations, including that with the European Union. So that's briefly the background why India sort of gave its. Like I mentioned that it's not as if the India's protectionism that the protectionist tendency that India had shown all all all through. And that was in significant sectors, which Raja also mentioned on the gates of agriculture, small industry. So that remained. So it's not as if we just went became, you know, very liberal and because of the exports going up. So, the question is that the red lines which were there in 2013, when the negotiations had come to have been suspended in 2013 the new India FTS, did the red lines also disappear. Now, from what I'm just saying that the, that our protectionism really didn't come down it actually went up. And therefore, you can actually see that the red lines really move. And the major sectors, which were opposed to doing this deal in 2013 and prior to that. Now, given tariffs in those sectors haven't come down, it'd be very difficult for them for these sectors to come on board and these are major sectors, and one of them is automobiles. Now, automobiles, you know, as European Union has major interest in automobiles, they would like the companies, the European companies would like to do business in this expanding Indian market, whether the Indian companies are going to blink. I don't think so because, you know, in another thing that has happened in since these negotiations have begun, is that there hasn't been a significant amount of discussion about these FTS in public domain. I think both in terms of the civil society engagement and in terms of the industries coming out and expressing their views on this FTA, we haven't actually heard anything. But I guess that when push comes to shove, the industry is going to say something about it and they're not going to be accepting this very easily. But the picture, as far as India is concerned, remains pretty much unchanged. And this year, we are also seeing, you know, coinciding with the global kind of, you know, slowing down of growth. We're also seeing a significant decrease in the rate of increase of export. So I think what drove us to these negotiations, those reasons maybe may not stand very much when the government comes to looking at these numbers this year. Let me come to some of the specifics now and in the terms of specifics, Ranjia mentioned, I'm just going to elaborate on the points that she made that in number of areas, and where the issues, the issue at hand would be changing from domestic legislations, you know, as a part of the commitment and the you India FTA commitment, this was basically mean multilateralization of multilateralizing the bilateral commitments. So if for instance intellectual property law is part of the commitment then of course it's going to be multilateralized in all the countries, or all the, you know, the WTO members would be able to take advantage of the change laws that India offers in case of intellectual property or for instance agriculture, for instance, in case of investment. Now, again, I would like to echo the Ronja's, you know, concerns about intellectual property, two areas which have always been very important for us, agriculture, where India has a distinct intellectual property law for protecting different varieties, and where we provide, you know, farmers rights we recognize informal innovation by farmers, and also allow farmers to save seeds of one harvest into the next, but those provisions will be taken out if India joins up and that's going to be a serious matter. The second issue again, you know, sort of getting a little more specific on what happened in the model law of protection of investments, there were substantive changes from the earlier model law and two of them are very significant one is the definition of investment. And that's very different from a standard template which the opinion proposing and the ISDS, the investor state dispute settlement mechanism where, you know, India provides a lot more space to domestic arbitration and then going to international arbitration that is going to be a big issue. Now, labor and environment, I think that these are going to be really the very big, the most important thing for for India, labor, because labor standards as proposed in the, the, the, the, the capital run trade and sustainable development. To commit India to ratify all the core conventions of the international labor organization, which India hasn't done. And the other thing that is happening today is that for labor, which means that labor rights are not going to be as strong as they used to be earlier. So there is going to be a clash between what the government intends to tone down labor rights and what you intends to strengthen labor rights in conformity with the ILO conventions. So I don't see how this is going to be resolved. In an environment, just one issue on climate change, India had already mentioned in the Glasgow COP that we are actually looking for a longer phase in for confirming to the UNF triple C targets for being carbon neutral. So these are going to be significant issues for India and finally I would like to mention that the market again, this has been said, but I just want to be a little more specific on that. We are in case of whatever you offer because like I mentioned, you know, doesn't have very high tariffs, tariffs are rather low. It would look attractive that from an Indian perspective that market access is available. And like Ronja mentioned that there are these standards which are waiting to be confronted. And one major issue that would arise here is in the technical, the chapter on technical barriers to trade, there is an annex in which the European Union has listed out several institutions whose standards would have to be met as a part of these agreements. I don't see, I don't know how many of the Indian industries have actually looked at this list. I was talking to a friend from the automobile industry. He didn't know that this agreement requires India, Indian Indian Indian industry to accept automobile industry norm that is called WP 29 World Forum for Harmonization. India has been negotiating but we are still not. So there are, so European Union has made it very clear that they have all these standards, all these institutions will have to be met. Otherwise, you know, market access is going to be going to be pretty difficult. And last but not the least, India's main, you know, I think the offensive interest is in services. And in services, it is especially more for which Laura was mentioning, you know, there are, there would be concerns in the European Union. If European Union is accepts India's demands for greater access to, to, you know, service providers from India on the mode for. So, all in all, this looks pretty daunting for India, and the concerns of giving market access the European Union, and getting market access into the European Union is going to be pretty daunting. So mentioned. I mean, hasn't, doesn't have great record in taking the free to governments in the past. There have been a lot of concerns in India about utilizing the FDA is the preferential access provided by ASEAN in Japan and Korea, and there is a lot of skepticism already. So how this skepticism shows up in course of these negotiations one at one and have to see, but of course, the road doesn't look very easy it looks quite quite rocky. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for this very thorough presentation and also looking deeper into the history of the negotiations and putting them in context with with other policies. And that was very enlightening. There had been also some short hiccups in your, in your, how you say, internet connection. Okay, I had the impression that we didn't really miss anything important. But if someone didn't understand something he may or she may put it in the, in the Q&A box. Thank you so much. Also, thank you again for mentioning that tariffs which are classic instruments of trade policies are still relevant in in parts of the world. In India, I guess we, when we talk about what I mentioned before, Mercosur, there's also still some sectors which have very elevated tariffs to protect the regional or national industries. But we can of course go deeper into that later. Now I would like to welcome very much our fourth speaker Helmut Scholz. He is member of the European Parliament since 2009. And there is member of the German delegation of the left group. And he is amongst many other roles, of course, also member of the Committee on International Trade Inter. Welcome very much Helmut. I would like to know from you what the demands of the left are in the European Parliament toward the EU-India trade deal, and also what in your point of view and the intentions of the European Union. Feel free to mention other topics that you would like to have discussed and address what the others said. The floor is yours Helmut. Thank you Florian and thank you all for having invited me to join this very in time, I would say, very now. Good afternoon in Europe and good evening, maybe already in India to our distinguished friends and colleagues over there. This timely event takes place just on the eve of the fourth round of the negotiations for comprehensive free trade agreement. And so I think it is good to have in this momentum this exchange of views concerning what our experience until now and what has to be done in the next phase of the accompanying the negotiations. So I have been invited to share a certain point of my analysis of the intentions of the European Union in particular of the left group in the EU Parliament or what is not the EU Union, but it's just one of the political actors in the parliament, who is of course also in responsibility to to deal with the negotiations or the outcome of the negotiations and with further perspectives. So the size of India's marked market, which is enormous population or 1.4 billion people has always created a certain appetite as I would say for businesses in the European Union to have access to this market. But that is the same for the United States. That's the same for the Russian Federation that's the same for China and other countries. So with its ability to offer quite a huge market to the Indian businesses as well, the EU succeeded in 2007 to invite India to sit together at the negotiation table for a formal free and formal free trade agreement. This is direct for some years, but until the suspension of the negotiations in 2013 for lack of ambition, probably from both sides. What we now see is formally not the new negotiations, which I really regret. But the relaunch, the relaunch of the old talks with an old mandate. And that is important to understand because it means that the negotiators from the European Union side, so the GG trade, the commission, operate on behalf of the council. So on behalf of all 27 member states governments, these old 16 year old mandate. And that is already my first and maybe biggest criticism. We must knowledge, take knowledge of the year 2023. Not of 2007. So the economic development in the world and the challenges have rapidly changed a lot. And with a deep impact into the realities of the liberty of the citizens. Of course, in the opinion but probably also very true for the Indian population of other people in other countries in the world and other continents. So the reason so why the negotiations probably have relaunched are linked to the to the question how we get access mutually to markets, but they have also relaunched in the decision of the political leaders and 21 are geopolitical interests. And this change geopolitical and also geo economic situation has led both sides to the readiness to relaunch the legacy that that we have to take into account that there's not only speaking about all trade languages. It has to do with the reality how we are producing today in our societies how we are consuming what is our interest in which way environmental social political changes have an impact on the reality and what does it mean for relationship between also the European Union and India. And that changed your political and geo economic situation is facing an increasingly fierce competition with China. So the competition between the US and China. And by a systemic rivalry. This is the US is seeking with the European Union for allies seeking for new partnerships with different countries and new strongholds also in the Indo Pacific region. My understanding is that India saw on its side, also opportunity to pursue its own interest and secure a better deal under these circumstances. The Russia's attack on the Ukraine has now increased also the willingness of the opinion to speed up even the negotiations. Aiming to conclude in record time. By the end of this year, these negotiations if it is successful if it will succeed that's a different issue, but the intention that they are linking to these negotiations. We should take very seriously. Both sides want to bring into the harvest before the parliamentary elections scheduled for May 2024. As a left we question the new Indo Pacific strategy of the European Union, instead of trying to talk to other countries, choosing to go against China. We should all come to our sense and cooperate on tackling the main threats of humankind. The things this would be for the left that is for the left in the European Parliament. One of the huge bargaining chips, as I would say, if we are transponding it in the trade language, to tackle climate change, to pandemic diseases, question of the loss of biodiversity, et cetera, et cetera, and finally also the question of peace and war. And we need to cooperate to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, seven years left. I want to be very clear, what does it mean for us in the cooperation also between the EU and India. This is very much about overcoming poverty on our planet, and we need to cooperate to enter prevent the wars and armed conflicts in our planet. However, this is not written in the old mandate for the European Union, for the India-FTA negotiations. Instead, the digital trade, as I said already, is following a standard approach of neoliberal trade liberalisation. They use standardised templates for all the chapters to be negotiated. You can find the text, as it was already mentioned by my priestess in the debate, and I thank you very much for your interesting contributions and insights on the website of the Commission. This is a degree of transparency, and I think here we have also to say that this was achieved also by the struggle of a lot of NGOs by the public, and also of a majority in the European Parliament to make trade negotiations more transparent as it has been in the past. And that was a success also on the demonstrations on TTIP and CETA, on the streets throughout the member states of the European Union. And in other agreements concluded, this meant to agree on zero tariffs to this template for up to 98% of all goods traded, leaving room for just few, very few or some extensions for the most sensitive products from the negotiating partners. And that is in particular interesting for India in the agriculture sector. Furthermore, the EU will aim to gain full access to India's attractive market for services offered by EU companies, and particularly the financial services. That is also a very important issue and Europe's large retail companies would love, I would stress, to be finally able to operate the large supermarkets and warehouse in India. The negotiations are also about defining the rules for this new trade relationship. These concerns quality conditions, this concerns, for example, the observation of Europe's sanitary and triple sanitary standards. Secondly, it is about intellectual property rights, what already stressed also in the, was stressed in the debate today, and Europe's large pharma corporations demand an end to India's shorter periods of patent protection, and that is agreed in other agreements worldwide to gain to India's medical generator sector, which reduces the profits of those corporations who once paid for the research. I would say that me as a left in the European Union want to stress the importance of having the subcontinent in a fair and solidary cooperation linkage to tackle the global challenges of today and tomorrow in particular in this direction. So let us take the issue, for example, of health and the conference on the future of Europe in the European Union has stressed that citizens want to have a health union. And so let us take this experience and to see how and which what is India's role as a pharmacy of the world offering affordable and thus accessible medications to the poor part of the population in all our countries as well. We strongly warn therefore against negotiating that model away for the sake of free trade and liberalizing only. It's the same time the left has to get a certain stand of also a certain understanding of the complexities of IPRs, the rules and standards how they are worked out how they are set in fix. And the question how to make them operable for a necessary cooperation in the field of R&D access to technologies, etc. We also think that in general it's a mistake of the Commission to treat India like any other partner in such FDA negotiations. For decades, India has followed its very own approach in its economic and regulatory policies that I want to stress and that it would be a sort of shock therapy. When overnight it had to be adopted to the EU's policy approaches and our experience and our way of how we are producing certain goods and services. And so there are no big supermarkets in India in contrary to Europe, it's not the retailers who define the price of farmers can achieve for the products in particular in your way of organizing its daily production and the redistribution through corporates would be at high risk. If here we would have a negative impact of the negotiations and we have to be very careful. I would also rather see such cooperatives to be formed in Europe and the rest of the world as well so why not to take the Indian example as a new benchmark as a new standard. We have to introduce that is then opening the question how to go there and do we have the chance to find international structures and organizations which are able to discuss such questions in a productive and corporative way. I recommend refute refute refute refute the negotiations. Let us identify, for example, what we need to do for the positive developments of our societies. I mentioned already the United Nations sustainable development goals. I guess and I always strive for that in my parliamentarian work to make them a good guideline, and as well to offer also other useful benchmarks to measure our success. And for example, not speak any more about the free trade agreement alone, but this free trade agreement must be changed into agreement of fair exchange and of cooperation. And so that can then have trade related elements, but it should be based on the principles of fair trade that should be based on the understanding not to maximize the profits and I must say that the new model chapter of the trade and sustainable development contains already some good or many good aspects for our future cooperation. Here I would really dispute a little bit with Laura, because I think if we put such TSD chapters in the core of the negotiations, then of course we have to find approaches. What does it mean to have a fair and cooperative relationship? What does it mean for workers? What does it mean for farmers to live in dignity and to have jobs in dignity, enabling them to create circular economies etc. I only wanted to give a certain understanding why we are welcoming that TSD chapters could be an option and India's resistance in the WTO to link trade to other issues that climate change to poverty questions to gender issues etc. Which is under the discussion, under the reforming of the WTO, I think it would be a missed opportunity for the left on both sides in India as well as in the European Union not to use this chance here to change the whole attitude and to go away from the only maximizing profits understanding of a neoliberal free trade relationship. So indeed also this TSD chapter here I agree is lacking commitments for financial support and suggestions for accompanying measures. So finally on the geopolitical aspect, one remark I assume that it would be a mistake to sign an EU deal without rethinking the way what does it mean for other free trade agreements or agreements or investment agreements already concluded. So the whole question of the RCEP, the CTPCP and of course also the CHI agreement between the European Union and China because they have to, that has to be understood in the complexity and I hope that also India is looking into this challenge because from my point of view, India has no interest in further deterioration of its relation with its neighbor. Thank you very much. Thank you so much Helmut for this presentation and also for keeping within the times more or less we gave. So we have now a lot of time for discussion. I was looking into all the questions that has been posed already. And since, well, since Helmut also brought the important dimension of the geopolitical and geoeconomic context, I was looking into starting with that, but then he came again with the TSD question. And I guess we should in this respect give the opportunity to the others to answer if they would like, because I think it was not only Laura who mentioned this, but also Ranja had in a way something to say about how trade and sustainable development chapters may or not be helpful in this context. And also if I understood Biswajit right when he talked about the heavy conflict that may be appearing about workers rights, then maybe he has also something to say to that. So I would probably give first the word to Ranja because it's the longest time she didn't speak of all of us. And then we go ahead with Laura and Biswajit on the TSD, if you want to say something about that. And of course I want to and I appreciate the point made by Mr. Schultz that I mean we talked about this in Delhi also right that that could these new trade, these trade agreements you be used to address these modern challenges of today. So my, I mean the point that I was raising. I mean, with respect to this is we do see these lot of discussions on trade and environment trade and sustainability coming into the WTO and EU is a major kind of promoter of that framework right in the WTO. And also in the FTAs, we are also seeing it coming in the IPF the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework with the US. The challenge is and I think there were questions also whether, for example the Sustainable Development Chapter can address the gender issues that can it protect you know what would be the impact on women and Dalits in India and could it promote their labor rights I think, for example if you look at the Sustainable Development Chapter on gender, it talks about implementing the SDG goal five, it talks about equal, you know, economic rights of men and women so for example no wage disparity between men and women and so on. But firstly, it's a cooperation model. And as I said, you know, there are substantive provisions in other chapters, which are not overturned by that chapter that chapter remains that way. What I would say is basically double speak because, for example, I mean, as I said, like women farmers you know would be strongly kind of hurt by this agreement because EU has major offensive interest in agriculture and they have high subsidies, they have high standards so without reciprocal access, we do expect European agricultural products to come in, you know flood the Indian market, and therefore the small farmers who do not have credit who do not have you know like any kind of support system, women farmers will be among them, they will be hurt so we have small women dairy, you know, as I said milk producers, for example, Amul are cooperative, and we have this very strong cooperative model in our dairy sector, and most of their milk suppliers are very small women dairy farmers they have one cow at home, they use some milk at home and the rest they sell. The problem is on paper, there is no discrimination against women right, and there is not. So these, but, but they will be hit by this FDA. So women have for example, less lower access to healthcare services to medicines. For example, you know I was talking to HIV infected couples in India, and the woman, they give up treatment any kind of, if they don't get the medicines, and if both the husband and wife are infected, they give up treatment, because the husband is the breadwinner, so his treatment must go on. And if you stop you know HIV treatment then you go back to zero, you're fully exposed to kind of to these risks, but the problem is again, this is not a gender discrimination written on paper. This is not something which are sustainable chapter development chapter can address, but at the same time, though, the other provisions in this FDA which raises you know intellectual property rights standards, which is expected to even further increase the cost of medicines, which is expected to you know actually create challenges for small women fishers, or women dairy farmers or women agricultural farmers, and take away for example their preferential treatment in government procurement. These are not being addressed. If you talk about sustainability issue you on the one hand has its you know raw material initiative is very clear that it wants to use the FDA's to extract raw material and natural resources from developing countries, and they use the investment chapter, and the export taxes they do not want us to impose any export taxes, they use it to extract raw material, but at the same time they are talking about sustainability, which means we the way they are talking about sustainability is, we cannot develop our own renewable energy projects. You know so there is a, and they will never address the ISDS, the EU has suggested either exit uncitral arbitration or now use own multilateral investment which which does not address the problems with the ISDS. So what I'm saying is, there are substantive provisions which would be working against environmental conservation against labor rights against women's rights, but these tokenistic chapters on so sustainable development will not address it. Sorry my response became a bit long. So I think we have to really think much more innovatively we have to think really how whether these could at all work frankly in trade agreements. Yeah, I'll end here. Thank you Raja. Laura, would you have something to add also to the subject. I can see it's a passionate subject and I'd love to spend an entire debate on this, but to be short. So I think there's, like I could totally agree with Raja I will just add the fact that so the EU is proposing a trade and sustainable development chapter, in which they could be sanctions where disputes could be made and it's using a case where the EU has had a dispute on the trade on the labor. So the EU always says, are you see thanks to a trade agreement and our beautiful chapter we got this labor improvement in Korea, but they invite you to read an article in bilaterals from a trade union leader in Korea and the improvements in the labor conditions came from the labor movement in Korea not from the trade deal. Also, there has been a case in between Guatemala and the USA, based on the trade deal for labor rights, and they lost so they try to improve labor rights for a trade deal in Guatemala. And it didn't work out because the dispute was about trade and the jury said no there's no labor violation. So when there are some strong TSD chapters, and there are some disputes, they, they don't really make a difference, the trade, the sustainable development chapters did it cut. If you take the example of milk will be sending milk from the EU to India. And whether we have the Paris agreement in the TSD chapter will not change the fact that will be the milk will travel so many miles when both the EU in India are not really well how to make their own milk. So I think we should keep saying no I think, of course the EU has, there was a lot of opposition to trade deals so now the commission has this TSD chapter, but it's because we said no, that we have those TSD chapters and we shouldn't stop saying no, we should say okay maybe you're improving but it's still very far away from the kind of deal that we need for the people on the planet. Thank you Laura. And now bis wadjit what's your take on this. Thank you. It's nice to see how much again, and after meeting in Delhi. I think I'd like to start from what Helmut said about changing the framework all together. And, you know, the framework that we are talking about in the free trade agreement is all about providing market access to the big business. And all some recognize the lateral trade and the trade framework that trade is supposed to be a handmaiden of development. Now, anyone who's actually done any work on the WTO would know from the preambler, you know, the paragraph of the market agreement, which said very clearly that trade is supposed to be a means to an end of providing jobs to providing, you know, sort of reducing inequalities, and, and what a view. So the point is that, you know, when we have increasing challenges that countries are facing in terms of their own development. Do we need an agreement which only looks at, you know, excluding very large sections of the society. And then the sustainable development goals and many, many other, you know, pronouncements at the global level. There is a lot of language about inclusive growth. But when you look at the large section of the society of a society that we're talking about. So all the discussion that we had today we're only talking about how the different chapters are going to be going to make the conditions more difficult for the working people for the for the farmers for the women for, you know, the small businesses. Now, surely these people are from the majority of population in India, and of course they would also be substantial number of people in Europe, Europe as well, who phase development development and challenges. So, so I would actually echo what Helmut was saying that, you know, the, the entire framework needs to be changed. You need a framework of cooperation where you, you, you're the markers don't have to be market access. The markers don't have to be increased market access in each other's countries, but then the marker should be food security, for instance, health security. As to rising women's rights, ensuring that they're not disempowered even more from wherever they are, and and steps are taken to improve the conditions of the marginalized sections of the society. So, so for me, you know, and the intellectual property chapter or whatever we're looking at the intellect in terms of intellectual property protection. The, the, the, the first and the foremost thing would be to ensure that access to medicines is ensured at affordable prices and this was one of the issues that the Indians of society had raised in 2006, you know, immediately after those. The decision was taken to launch the negotiations and we knew what was coming. And after 2007, of course, we got together and then it was in 2008 or 2009 I forgetting my memory fails me now that there was a resolution in the European Parliament, saying that India's concerns about access to medicines at affordable prices. That would, that would be respected. And, and whatever comes out of the trade deal. In terms of the patent law, which provides the space to, you know, for ensuring affordable medicines that is that is that is there. So I think what we need to do is to really, you know, shift the whole the entire, you know, the Gold Coast. India and the European Union need to need to collaborate and to make, you know, the situations, the conditions and the people's are in our two countries, better from what they are. Ensure that you know the, the sustainable development goals don't become like the millennium development goals that were that were earlier. You know, put down for the developing countries, and the sustainable development goals at the end of seven, seven years and in 2030. We see that there's been a substantial improvement towards realizing some of those targets that have been put in the sustainable development goals. Now I don't see how the current framework, you know that the current model of economic management, the retrogression for from what is already there. I see that the current model of economic management that changes from, you know, looking at, you know, just the markets to considering the conditions of the people and improving their conditions. Now, that needs to be a project project that needs to be, you know, meeting of the minds from from two sides, and to give an alternative, because the more we discuss this this kind of frameworks, the more we are actually be trying to just do what is called damage limitation would say that you know we're cutting at cutting at the corners and saying that look you know this is something that doesn't look good. Let us not do this. Let us try and make, make it a little more palatable. At the end of the day, you know, these kinds of minor fixes will not really provide much much in terms of what maybe what we want to go, and there's something that has been very succinctly actually this is the framework that. And really we needed, we need an alternative framework. And, you know, the entire, like I said, the goalpost needs to change, and, and we need to work from there, we need to work backwards from a different set of goals of cooperation between the two countries, and see how this these, you know, the agreements between these cooperation between the two countries takes the two countries closer to what their peoples actually expect, aspire, rather than just the big businesses what they aspire. So that is a very important task that is before us. That's the larger big I think we can again talk endlessly about it but surely we need a framework. And this is the time to actually start looking at a different framework, the framework that Helmut started talking about and what I was just trying to talk on my head. This is something that is urgently required. There was a question I just wanted to respond in the, in the. Can you hear me. There had been some dropouts again try again. If not, you may try to switch off your camera so we can. I do that. Yeah, okay. Does it sound better. We can we can hear you. Okay, no, what I said, you know, I have a short short point. Finally, I said that we need to change the goalposts. And then we need to work backwards to see how we can meet those back to those those goalposts. And what we need to do in terms of increasing our, you know, increasing the cooperation between the two countries. We are really talking about inclusive development. We are really talking about stopping this empowerment of the marginalized sections of society. And we don't want another sort of structure coming on top of whatever is already there to make things even worse. So, so that that is what my short point is and my appeal to all concern would be that, let us start working on this kind of a framework. Governments and the parliaments that this is what is what is required to be done. And I'm sure RLS can can can can, you know, can support and facilitate this kind of work. So, I just wanted to respond to a couple of questions one particular question on the geopolitical, you know, dimension of these this these negotiations. Certainly, there is a geopolitical dimension and it actually reinforces what the commitment of the government to do this trade deal. And India is actually doing very careful balancing act between is, you know, sort of long standing closeness with the with the Russians. And this the closeness transcends many levels just not the economic level, but also strategic support that, you know, the government or India has been receiving for for decades. And that is being balanced by, you know, certainly there is there is a very, very important dimension there. And it's it's again very important to look beyond these kinds of the conflict situation that we are seeing. And then again, the civil society needs to think through and find what can be done in order to end this kind of the conflict that is there. Both all sides need to talk to each other and find a way out. It's not and my firm opinion is that it's not just the governments which can actually do this. There needs to be a very active involvement by the civil society, very strong involvement by the parliament in the country's concern and to come up with some kind of a way forward. So I thought that, you know, I'll try and suggest what I think is extremely important in the larger context. And these are the steps that we could take going forward. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Now, please, Helmut, please allow me to take again. And Laura before you have the chance to to say to respond again to what has been said, because there had been some very specific questions which I would like to to ask now and then we can go back into the bigger debate we had. So I would lie out. Some of the listeners would like to know from you, Ranja, how the agreement could impact women and Dalits and of what could be included in this. No, no, that's a bit the same. What could be included in the sustainability chapter to promote the labor rights. Well, we said some of this already but if you have something to add and then there was the question about the small scale farmers. Someone wanted to know how many farmers would be affected by this. If you could just answer these questions quickly. Thank you very much. On the gender issue I think I kind of already explained that women who are, you know, like, who, especially women from poor households, which would include Dalits and rural women households, you know, rural women, and even women in poor urban households. We already have limited access say to medicines right, and then in, we have a preponderance of women farmers among small farmers women farmers and generally small farmers. They are also as I said like small milk producers. So we do expect adverse impact because I think this agreement as I was saying at the beginning. It would be an in equalizing agreement it makes the more even in my country it would make the more powerful the big business maybe richer, but the smaller producers you know women and modular marginalized constituencies will have less access to services resources and so on. As I said the gender chapter I mean the gender part of the sustainable development chapter does not it has some language on meeting SDGs etc but it actually does not address the challenges which would come from other parts of the agreement. The substantive provisions on agriculture, which will make European, you know, Agri business enter Indian markets and displace Indian small farmers and so on. So these kind of issues, they are not seen as gender issues right, so these cannot be addressed to the gender chapter in any case and the gender chapter in any case is kind of more. Anyway, more lip service it doesn't really go deep into the problems and it doesn't take on the substantive challenges I think that's one and I think yeah about small scale farmers I mean 93 million farmers is what we have and around 80% of them are small farmers now I'm not saying that all will be affected right, but we do expect a major threat because under the circumstances it's the small farmers which will get pushed out if you're not. You know opera if you're large scale you still may be able to survive a little bit and the small farmers especially don't have access to credit. Their access to even land is at threat, even from you know the investment provisions and access to they cannot even afford seeds and fertilizers you know like every every when they cultivate. So they are already in a very precarious condition, we are having massive farmers suicides actually I mean there are farmer groups present here who could tell you. And these are the huge but and so therefore, of small farmers we do expect, not all but a huge lot of them so say you, we are talking about 70 million farmers, but we are not saying that all 70 million farmers would be wiped out but we do expect a massive challenge there and dairy if you talk about 8 million farmers dairy farmers. And there was a question that what I mean I think maybe that's for Laura but what does the European Commission reply when we talk about small scale agriculture. See they are never going to say they're against they are not in principle on paper against small scale agriculture right, it is the what they are demanding will in effect wipe out small scale agriculture in India. That is the that's the concern. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Laura. There had been someone asking question about to go more into depth into the data exchange issue, because of the new data privacy law which is has obviously brought into effect in India so if you could do that. Also, there had been quest a question about the EU due diligence law, which is supposed to come in effect and what this could have. What could this mean for the you in the FDA. And yes, there was also the question about what the European Commission says, when NGOs point out the small scale that the focus on small scale agriculture, contrary to big agricultural business. Laura. Okay, perfect. And I'll start with data privacy. So the way it works. It's, it's not part of the free trade agreement in itself is the EU that officially recognize the Indian data privacy laws as equivalent are adequate. It's an adequacy decision. So the EU state. We also use losing you again Laura, probably you may also try to turn off your camera while you speak. Can you hear me. Probably that's not the case. Objective. Can you hear me. Yeah, I can hear you can you hear me. I think I'm not the only one who completely lost you for the last minute. Let's try again. Okay. So I was talking about the way it works as an adequacy law. Okay, I'm going to have a look at someone say anything. Okay. So the EU reckon has what it could cause an adequacy decision so it's not part of the free trade agreement in itself, but it has a separate decision saying this country has different laws but we believe that they protect citizens and data privacy the same way. So they enact an adequacy decision. And this has been done for instance while there were negotiations between the EU and the US, and there was an agreement that the US had different data privacy legislation, but it was the same level of ambition in and privacy, data privacy protection. And this has been challenged in the EU court of justice a few times. And the idea was that and now the law in India has changed but there were lots of. I mean the trade negotiators were quite positive that the EU would do the same kind of decisions for India so it would basically recognize Indian privacy laws as equivalent to EU privacy laws. And the change now considering the fact that the law doesn't cover government. So it allows government to keep having surveilling its citizens and the online actions of citizens, and this leads to a lot of human rights relations in India. So it's now more unlikely that the decision will be taken over there will be a lot of push from businesses and from politicians to actually have this decision. I think the EU will be scared also of any kind of trials and legal consequences of this due to the fact that what happened between the EU and the US so it wasn't it was on a good way when I was writing the report everybody was very positive and now that the law is out we know that it might be actually more difficult than we thought for data privacy due diligence legislation this due diligence would require EU companies to respect the human social environmental rights across their supply chain and could allow for civil society to sue. Because in case they don't respect this EU law, it's not final for the moment. And there are some still some exclusions in the law so financial services, for instance, so I don't think it's contradictory because what the EU does with its trade deal is it's open up new supply chains for its big business across the world. It asks them to respect more the rights, but it's very difficult to know how this law is going to work because first it's not final but also how the courts are going to interpret the law how NGOs are going to use or not the law how how it's going to. Yeah, so it's very hard to to give you to compare them I think for the moment and for the EU Commission and small farmers and one day I asked this to the lead agricultural negotiator. He works on is a trade negotiator but he's the lead negotiator for agriculture sorry, and I asked him I said but you know you're promoting big agricultural farms you promoting. Yeah, it's not a farms anymore to me they already factories now. Well, what we want to do is to import cheap agricultural products to the EU in order to feed all the EU citizens, and we want to export high value added products to the external world, and I felt like wow so you're just thinking of agriculture as as like manufacturing you know you're not thinking about how we produce it about the water about the people so this was the response that I got and obviously a lot of the time the discourse is also about yeah we were small scale and blah blah blah but as we see with FDA is the reality is completely different. Thank you so much Laura. And it was much better when you turned off your camera we we could hear you, Chris been clear. So, now we have still 15 minutes so I would say we can give all of the panelists again another three minutes to address some of the questions that had been raised. One question, which probably helmet can answer which is a tough one how can we get negotiators to abandon the free trade approach. I don't know if you have an answer to that but I guess you have a lot to say about everything else that has been said. So, it's to you helmet, please. Thanks, Lauren. Probably this question. All together could not answer the problem is because that is embedded in the logic of the existing capitalist economic structures, both in the US and India. So, therefore, there is no I don't see any, any readiness on the political majorities to to depart from this logic or from this, from this approach, because that would mean in a certain way evolution and thinking. But nevertheless, we have to strive for influencing pressing and making proposals to change this logic in the way that the logic for answering the real global challenges needs also rethinking of the logic. So in a certain way, I would say learning by doing and that means we have to learn that our pressure on the way of how we are influencing trade negotiations has a lot of to do with what we can gain what we have to do. But I think that is the responsibility of the left and that would also my answer to certain problems and questions we have discussed until now. The logic we was a was a was a idea of markers to set markers into the into the economic reality. So, so do we are focusing on health security or food security, or do we focus on market access in the agricultural sector, or in trading goods. If we if we change the narratives, we are changing also in a certain ways that the understanding of the logic and to to put forward this, these narratives change as a left into the also in the company, the negotiation processes but also of course also to measuring and the achieved or not achieved results in negotiations would be mean that must be in a transparent way then public, go into public and by that also to keep the citizens as a say in and and in charging what has been achieved and what has not been achieved and that leads me to the second remark. I mean, of course, the negotiations are taking place in a certain executive level. The parliament is always trying as much as possible to to create transparency and includes the NGO sector includes the trade unions include also of course the economic stakeholders and having an understanding what the negotiators are doing. The problem is that we very often have not enforceable mechanisms to deal with the question how we can trans transport that into a broader social awareness. And here I see also the, the problem that TSD chapters, of course, I agree here with Laura are a starting point, they are not yet there where we want to have them and the and the struggle for enforceability for for instruments for tools for to include it into the TSD chapters would, of course, create the relationship to the other chapters of the agreement. So if we have an overall agreement with a with an binding and enforceable TSD chapter, of course, it has an influence on the way of how the agree text and other sectors are realized. And that is not, they are not separate, but this is a whole overall agreement and therefore the left in the parliament is striving for this enforceability. And here I think also that we should discuss even more how we are cooperating. And the Indian left and us. So what does it mean for the Indian for the Indian public for the Indian politicians etc to influence influence it. So why not to demand to make the Indian texts available. Why is only the approach available. So what why we have not a parliamentarian debate in the in the Indian parliament and probably also the federal states at that level, if you are speaking about the procurement issues. These are the concrete examples where we have to to demand where we have to come in and to demand concrete results and to make the results understandable transparent and by that also creating an awareness about the agreement as such. And finally, we have a lot just now in the Indian Union on horizontal trade, what to say laws now in the pipeline already already agreed and adopted, and some of them are coming into force. The diligence legislation is in European legislation, it is forcing European businesses to keep a control about other human rights violations other labor rights violations are they environmental crimes etc committed in the value chain. This is a huge step forward from my point of view, and it will change totally the way of the future or the trade relationship. And targeting European companies at the moment, and Transnationals one, so that they and there with the seat in Europe. In that issue, we are going into I think in the right direction, also to take the corporate responsibility into the focus so that we are forcing the corporations to deal with human rights as labor rights etc etc. It's one one aspect of this of the struggle of the battle we have to to to leave and it is not by occasion that a lot of the systems comes from the big corporations, less from the smaller ones from the small and medium size corporations because they are feeling if there is no such legislation, they have even more what to say losses in competition, then, then with with such a due diligence law. And that is also true for other horizontal trade legislation, the opinion is organizing for it some defensive way some in an offensive way. Generally, finally speaking, we relate I have and may a conference in the European Parliament on beyond growth. So that we should stop to think only in the terms of growth of economic growth etc, because the question of the environment and challenge of the climate catastrophe are facing means, we have to rethink the whole way of the realities in our societies, and that is true for all of them. And if, for example, the Brazilian new elected Brazilian President Lula saying we have to return also to the question to focus on poverty reduction on on global south cooperation, regional cooperation, circular economies, I think that is all these pieces have to put together. If yes, if you want to develop a new, what to say, international global valuable framing of fair cooperation in the interest of the governments of our citizens. Thank you. I would like now to briefly give again the chance to take the floor to be swadji. If you have anything to add. Go ahead, but as I said we have less than eight minutes so please keep it short. So I think I would just like to endorse what I would say that the end that I think we need a change in narrative and, as long as we become yet we are just just discussing what is already on the table we are reacting to what is already being put on the table. We have always argued, you know, in the in the context of civil society that India needs a proactive, you know, sort of strategy to deal with all these trade and trade agreements. And not just the feeder agreements the larger question of trade integration we need a, we need a proactive narrative you know we are we are far too sort of reactive we are only reacting to what is there on the table, and we are not done enough. Now it's also very important for us again I mentioned this earlier but I would like to reiterate that there has to be a very active engagement with the government of India, and to really get from the government of India, what its own thinking is about not just the you India trade, the freedom agreement which is the largest that we are on the table, but generally it's approach towards freedom agreements in particular, and trade and integration in general. So that is very important and without this, you know, we really can't also start having a very creative alternative framework. It's not just enough to have like a supply side approach that we just produce a framework and we try to try to be proactive in producing a framework, we also need to see how we feed this all into the system and create spaces where, you know, whatever we are proposing is accepted and taken forward. Now that's a huge task and I think Indian civil society has done it in the past and we need to do it. And besides, there used to be a very close cooperation between Indian civil society and the European civil society. Now that doesn't seem to be present now. At least I'm not aware of it, you know, we had a number of friends in the earlier rounds, where we used to interact, exchange notes and do the best we can. I think we need to get that back without the cooperation among the civil society's players. I don't think it will be enough for just the Indian civil society to take, you know, to take that big step. We need to do, we need to, you know, sort of complete the circle. So that's all I had to say in response to some very useful and enlightening discussion that we had. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And probably Raja, you have also some last thoughts and something to say on this civil society cooperation because you've been involved in these processes for a long time. I think in the earlier phase civil society, both in EU and India, we were very active. I remember delivering these, the patient groups delivered plastic coffins to the European Commission's office in Delhi and it really worked actually I think we were able to kind of generate a lot of response from civil society. This time, because of COVID and also other reasons and India is negotiating so many FTAs I mean Nicholas was asking and yes it is a huge shift in India's trade policy. I mean this government was kind of more averse to FTAs in the middle. They walked out of our set but now suddenly and of course China is a major factor I think one is to build allies outside China but India is also hoping to capture some of the maybe investment and business that is that they are thinking will get displaced from China in the current political environment. But given that this sudden engagement in many FTAs and with northern partners simultaneously has also made the civil society. I mean, we have not been ready. I mean, I mean we welcome the I mean therefore the work that you know RLS has tried to do by you know doing this analysis like triggering some of the thinking and bringing in some analysis and I think yeah I agree with professor Dhar about the need to work with you know on both sides together because I think all of us are for the same objectives. And therefore it was great to see Mr Scholes in in Delhi. And also I mean we would look forward to I mean I think this agreement will probably not going to end in 2023 or I mean I think 2024 is supposed to be the deadline. I'm not sure I mean because it is a very ambitious agreement. So, I don't know whether it will get concluded so there is time but I think we really need to get our act together but in terms of changing the framework I would say you know there's already a cooperation agreement between the EU and India. I would say I mean, frankly for me, maybe I'm too cynical, but I do not see these very good constructive things coming in through trade agreements because the main agenda is extremely problematic. And you know even if we are trying to get these new kind of development issues in, they don't seem to work because the commercial objective is so strong and between, and it is still a not South FTA I mean though India is so called emerging economy etc it still has massive poverty inequality and therefore these kind of ambitious FTAs which are as Professor Dhar was saying that Indian negotiators may not be fully even prepared for even Indian industry does not know what's coming. I mean I think this, I mean it would be a challenge to get this kind of a model to actually work for development or for human rights or you know sustainability. Yeah, I think I'll end here. Thank you very much Ranga. And now Laura, for the very last thoughts, very short please. The floor is yours. I agree with Rania. I don't think the negotiations will end in 2024. I think it will take some time. I think we can win because we are prepared at a very early moment so thank you again for raising already the fact that disagreement is coming up because I think it was out of the radar of many civil society organization at least in Europe. So the idea is now we have information we have people that are ready to share information and, and when you become clear and the deadline will come really soon I think we'll have the means to mobilize. I think one thing is the one hope that I have is that it's, I would, I wish it's not the extreme rights in Europe that stops the agreement. I really really hope that it's not because we want to have more Indian workers coming to the EU that this will actually block the agreement. I hope that we have a really strong leftist movement with different opinions as we've seen today, both in India and both in the EU that can mobilize and show that we can have a different trade agenda and don't leave this criticism of EU trade to the extreme right but mobilize before them and show them that the left also has ideas for a better world. And the left has this for a couple of hundred years now, the better ideas for a better world. And thank you very much for these last words. And as Laura and the other said, I hope this debate could steer interest within civil society on both sides of the ocean, which ocean is it actually to work on this agreement. So our distinguished speakers, Helmut Scholz, Biswad, Jit Dar, Ranja, Sengupta and Laura Feheke. And I also ask you to look into their reports. They are very informative. If you didn't do that yet. And thanks also to the colleagues working in the background that would be Julie Nadia and Christina. And I'm looking forward to seeing you again and we keep working on these issues. Thank you so much. Bye bye everyone. Thank you very much. Thank you and hopefully meet in person somewhere in some time. Of course. See you. Thank you Florian. Bye bye.