Piyush Goyal meets EU's Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič in New Delhi

India's Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal met EU's Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič in New Delhi on Monday. The meeting took stock of progress in the India-EU trade talks and aims to sort out pending issues.

While a team of EU's trade negotiators had met the Indian Minister today, they're expected to again meet him on Tuesday as both sides hold two days of talks post completion of 14 rounds of negotiations.

EU's Ambassador to India Herve Delphin had earlier described the current negotiations as a fundamentally new phase, called them “EU-India FTA negotiation 2.0”.

After the 14th round of negotiations, India's Commerce Ministry had described subsequent talks as the last and the most arduous leg of their ongoing trade negotiations.

The EU is India’s largest trading partner, with bilateral goods trade reaching $137.5 billion dollars in FY 2023-24. The Composition of the EU Delegation is as follows:

1) Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič

2) Sabine Weyand, Director General DG Trade

3) Hervé Delphin, EU Ambassador to India

4) Sofia Asteriadi, Deputy Head of Cabinet of Commissioner Sefcovic

5) Mate Kander, Assistant to Director General Weyand

6) Christophe Kiener, EU Chief Negotiator

7) Petros Sourmelis, Head of Trade Section, EU Delegation to India

8) Luis Portero, DG Trade - India team

9) Jorge Torres, DG Trade - India team

While India is looking to export more labour-intensive goods to the EU with increased market access, the EU aims to export more automobiles and liquor to India.

Earlier, government sources had indicated that the 27-member bloc's recent nod to India's fisheries exports will offset loss of export avenues for the sector due to the US tariffs, adding that the talks are proceeding well and "on track to be concluded by (the) year-end".