The European Union (EU) believes that India’s demand on market access for its professionals under the proposed Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA) will be politically difficult to concede. Since the talks started in 2007, India has been demanding data adequacy under services trade, mainly for its IT-ITeS professionals, as this is expected to boost the country’s IT offshore industry with free flow of data. It is doubtful that the EU will grant this demand as it will require a legislative change by the European Parliament.
European Commission’s Trade department has said that “India’s demand on getting more market access for its professionals is a bit too high. It will be difficult to accommodate their demand on services trade”. However, talks on all these issues are underway at the technical level between both sides. There is no decision yet on when the two sides would have a formal round of talks.
Furthermore, for data adequacy the EU would have to recognise India as a “data secured” nation and this does not come under the ambit of the BTIA. Both sides have also set up a joint working group on this issue as the European Commission believes India’s cyber security laws have “huge gaps” and do not conform to European standards.