India-EU pact set to expand market access, digital trade and worker mobility

Mumbai: India's free trade agreement with the European Union is expected to expand market access and commercial commitments for services and digital trade as well as boost skilled worker mobility, experts said.

According to India's software industry body Nasscom, the FTA would ease cross-border delivery for India's IT exporters and strengthen digital trade while ensuring safeguards for privacy, security and public policy.

The FTA has secured expanded and commercially significant commitments from the EU across 144 subsectors sectors including IT/ITeS, professional services, other business services and education services, the government said in its statement. "This covers a vast range of services sectors spectrum in which Indian service providers will get a stable and conducive regime in the EU market to supply their services." Nasscom expects the FTA to drive higher European investment into India's IT ecosystem and enable joint ventures and R&D partnerships in emerging areas such as artificial intelligence, semiconductors, clean technologies and startups. "Indian IT companies could benefit from technology transfer, co-creation, and expanded partnerships," Nasscom said. "We view the EU-India FTA as a strong catalyst for the next generation of Global Capability Centres (GCCs)," said Rohit Jain, managing partner at law firm Singhania & Co. "This moves the needle from simple cost-arbitrage to definitive product ownership. By providing a robust Innovation and R&D framework, the FTA offers the Intellectual Property (IP) certainty that European MNCs require to shift core technology development to their Indian captive centres," he said. He added that alignment between India's DPDP Act and the EU's GDPR could reduce regulatory friction. "This effectively eliminates the compliance tax on cross-border data flows, enabling seamless real-time integration between European headquarters and Indian GCCs," Jain said.