India-EU Seal Record-Size FTA, Ending 19-Year Negotiations

Major North-South trade pacts are rare; the last of comparable scale was NAFTA’s launch in 1994, which stitched together asymmetric economies to lock in supply-chain integration. Europe’s pivot to India echoes its 1973 search for new markets after the first oil shock, but now energy security, Chinese over-reliance, and the weaponisation of tariffs (e.g., U.S. Section 232 in 2018) push Brussels toward diversification. For India, the deal caps two decades of stalled talks and mirrors the 2001 WTO accession of China that turbo-charged its exports; Delhi hopes for a similar manufacturing boom without ceding policy space on agriculture and carbon taxes. If the pact survives ratification battles in 27 parliaments and delivers the promised €200 billion trade by 2030, it could anchor a multipolar trade order where medium powers hedge between Washington and Beijing—an inflection that historians in 2126 may see as the moment the Indo-European corridor crystallised.