First India-EU Technology Council Meeting On May 16 To Discuss Inter-Operability
The first meeting of the India-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC) on May 16 will finalise an ambitious agenda that is expected to include setting standards for critical technologies and building inter-operability between digital systems, people familiar with the matter said.
India is only the second country, after the US, with which the European Union (EU) has a TTC, and the two sides agreed to launch the strategic mechanism during European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s visit to India in April 2022. Ahead of the TTC meeting in Brussels, three working groups have met over the past year to give final shape to the agenda for collaboration.
The Indian side will be represented at the upcoming meeting by external affairs minister S Jaishankar, commerce minister Piyush Goyal and communications and IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw – an indication of the importance attached by New Delhi to the TTC.
A lot of groundwork to identify areas for cooperation under the TTC has been done by the three working groups focused on strategic technologies, digital governance and digital connectivity; green and clean energy technologies; and trade, investment and resilient value chains.
Though left unstated, a lot of this work has also focused on countering challenges from China in areas ranging from technology to trade, the people said. Besides the setting of standards for critical and emerging technologies such as 5G, 6G and artificial intelligence (AI), the two sides have worked on issues such as screening of foreign direct investment (FDI) to ensure transparency in business operations, they said.
The Indian side has taken up inter-operability of the “India Stack”, a set of open APIs and digital public goods encompassing identity, data and digital payments, with similar systems in Europe. The work on 5G and 6G will be an opportunity for the Indian side to explore European markets, the people said.
“We have already made inroads with the United Payments Interface (UPI) in Singapore and France and are branching out into other markets. The India Stack is also part of the G20 agenda and UPI is crucial for remittances,” one of the people said.
However, the people acknowledged the Indian side has faced pushback in these efforts from global payment processors such as Visa and Mastercard, who levy significant charges on transactions and fear their profits will be hit with greater acceptance of UPI.
The commerce ministry didn’t respond to an email query on the matter. A second person with knowledge of the discussions described the TTC as an important forum of cooperation between “two of the largest open market economies and pluralistic societies” and a result of the joint visions of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and von der Leyen.
“TTC is a high-level forum, formed for providing political-level oversight of all aspects of the India-EU relationship and to ensure coordination between different areas of cooperation,” the second person said.
Among other things, the TTC will focus on three important areas – facilitating ongoing negotiations for a free trade agreement (FTA) with the EU, ensuring a more strategic EU role in the Indo-Pacific, and promoting an international rules-based order on key issues such as climate action, clean energy, sustainable growth, digital transformation, the people said.
The TTC will also promote trade and investments, including the partnership in India’s green hydrogen mission. In this context, the two sides are working on reconciling and aligning their standards and definitions for green hydrogen production and storage, the people said.
At the time of the TTC’s formation, the two sides agreed to use it as a “strategic coordination mechanism” to address crucial issues pertaining to trade, technology and security, the second person said.
In this context, India and the EU signed an agreement last November on cooperation in quantum technologies and using supercomputers for climate modelling, predicting natural disasters and bio-molecular medicines.
India is the EU’s 10th largest trading partner, accounting for 2.1% of total trade in goods. The EU is India’s third largest trading partner, accounting for trade in goods worth €88 billion in 2021 or a little more than 10% of total Indian trade. Trade in services between the two sides touched €30.4 billion in 2020.