India rejects EU social clauses
Supports aid, opposes tariff cuts for Pakistan.
BRUSSELS:
India will not agree on social or environmental targets as part of an EU trade agreement, and does not support EU plans to help flood-ravaged Pakistan with export concessions, the trade minister said.
Although the 27-nation bloc places high importance on the targets, India’s objections to binding rules on sustainability, tying Indian and EU operators there to strict labour rights and environmental protection, are unlikely to stall the talks.
“There can be no binding commitments on sustainability (in an EU-India trade agreement). Extraneous issues do not fit here,” Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma said ahead of an EU-India summit later on Friday.
EU efforts to stabilise regions of Pakistan ravaged by floods this year should be through direct aid payments, not through tariff cuts to Pakistani exporters, Sharma said.
“We’re all for assistance to Pakistan, but let these two issues not be mixed,” he said in the interview conducted on Thursday. “These are separate issues.”
Published in The Express Tribune, December 11th, 2010.
India will not agree on social or environmental targets as part of an EU trade agreement, and does not support EU plans to help flood-ravaged Pakistan with export concessions, the trade minister said.
Although the 27-nation bloc places high importance on the targets, India’s objections to binding rules on sustainability, tying Indian and EU operators there to strict labour rights and environmental protection, are unlikely to stall the talks.
“There can be no binding commitments on sustainability (in an EU-India trade agreement). Extraneous issues do not fit here,” Indian Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma said ahead of an EU-India summit later on Friday.
EU efforts to stabilise regions of Pakistan ravaged by floods this year should be through direct aid payments, not through tariff cuts to Pakistani exporters, Sharma said.
“We’re all for assistance to Pakistan, but let these two issues not be mixed,” he said in the interview conducted on Thursday. “These are separate issues.”
Published in The Express Tribune, December 11th, 2010.