Brussels sends the India-EU trade deal to the Council for signature

The European Commission sent the India-EU free trade agreement to the Council of the European Union on Friday and asked member states for authority to sign it. If the Council agrees, officials on both sides have pointed to a December signing. The European Parliament would still have to consent, and India would have to finish its own ratification, before the pact takes effect. Piyush Goyal has previously spoken of entry into force in the first quarter of 2027.

The Commission called the deal the largest trade agreement either side has concluded. Negotiators closed the text on 27 January 2026 at the 16th India-EU summit in New Delhi. Talks first opened in 2007, stopped in 2013 and restarted in 2022. The last formal round was in October 2025. Legal scrubbing filled the months between January and this week's referral.

The numbers in the Commission's own note are specific. Goods and services trade already exceeds €180 billion a year and supports close to 800,000 jobs in the EU. The agreement would eliminate or cut tariffs on 96 percent of EU goods exports to India, a saving the Commission puts at about €4 billion a year in duties. Brussels has set a target of doubling European goods exports to India by 2032. India offered concessions on 86 percent of tariff lines. The EU offered liberalisation on 97 percent of lines, covering 99.5 percent of trade value, with immediate duty elimination on more than 70 percent of lines. In FY26 India ran a goods surplus of about $6 billion with the EU, importing $66 billion from the bloc.

Labour-intensive Indian sectors named by Goyal include textiles, leather, gems and jewellery, marine products and toys. On 4 September, speaking at an India-Belgium dialogue in Mumbai, he said all 27 EU governments supported the pact and wanted the remaining formalities finished quickly. Unanimity of that kind, he said, is rare in the European system. Jean-Eric Paquet, the incoming EU ambassador to India, called the Council referral one step closer to the finish line.

The Council vote is the first political filter that can still change the calendar. A single government can slow a signing even after the Commission has tabled the text. Agriculture, cars and procurement are the files that usually produce that delay in European trade votes. The Commission's claim that the deal is the largest either side has signed is a size claim, not a guarantee that every capital will treat it as urgent.

For New Delhi the timing sits beside the BRICS summit. Goyal has separately pushed local-currency settlement among BRICS members. An EU deal that cuts tariffs on 97 percent of European lines is a different bet: it ties Indian exporters to a market that still invoices in euros and dollars. The two tracks can run together. They answer different risks. The FTA is insurance against a trading system that has spent two years rearranging around tariffs and war. Local-currency talk is insurance against the dollar itself.

Sensitive sectors were the reason the 2007 to 2013 round died. Goyal said this version protected sensitive sectors on both sides and that he had heard no dissent. That is a minister's account of a text the public has not yet read line by line. The schedules, once published, will show which farm products, which car parts and which procurement chapters actually moved.

What happens next is sequential. The Council authorises signature. The two sides sign. The Parliament consents. India ratifies. Only then do the duty cuts start. A December ceremony would still leave a quarter of technical work before a 2027 start date. Exporters who want to know which line falls on day one will have to wait for the published schedules, not for the photograph.