Further protests from activists against EU and India FTA

As India and the European Union meet today for a Summit in New Delhi to iron out the differences over a Free Trade Agreement, nearly two thousand people living with HIV and the international medical humanitarian organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) protested in the streets of the Indian capital to warn that remaining harmful provisions in the agreement could have a severely negative impact on access to affordable medicine for people in developing countries.

“We have watched too many people die in places where we work because the medicines they need are too expensive,” said Unni Karunakara, international president of MSF, adding: “We cannot allow this trade deal to shut down the pharmacy of the developing world.”

The FTA has implications way beyond the medicines sector – where intellectual property rights are a main focus, aiming essentially to tackle high Indian tariffs in several retail sectors. The EU particularly insists on the reduction of tariffs on wines and spirits, dairy products and cars. The proposed FTA would cut import duties on over 90% of all tradable goods during the next 10-year period and scale up bilateral trade in goods and services to $200 billion by 2013.