By Dr. Ranjan Solomon
The renewed push for an EU–India Free Trade Agreement is being presented as a partnership between equals — a coming together of the world’s largest democracy and one of the most powerful economic blocs. The language is reassuring and familiar: sustainability, shared values, rules-based trade, ethical supply chains, green transitions. Yet behind this polished diplomatic vocabulary lies a far older structure of power. Strip away the technocratic veneer and what emerges is a trade framework tilted decisively in favour of Europe, carrying the unmistakable imprint of a colonial economic mindset — not through territorial control, but through regulatory domination.
This is not an argument against trade. It is an argument against unequal trade dressed up as cooperation.
Europe no longer rules colonies with gunboats or administrators. Its power today lies in exporting rules. The modern European Union exercises influence not through direct political control but through standards — environmental norms, labour regulations, intellectual property regimes, data protection frameworks and carbon accounting mechanisms. These are presented as neutral, universal and progressive. In practice, they operate as non-tariff barriers that favour economies already industrialised, capital-rich and technologically dominant. What scholars describe as regulatory imperialism is, in effect, colonialism without colonies — discipline without occupation.
India, still grappling with agrarian distress, informal labour, fragile manufacturing and deep inequality, is being asked to comply with standards designed for post-industrial Europe, without corresponding access to finance, technology or transition support. The historical imbalance is simply erased from the negotiating table.
The asymmetry at the heart of the EU–India FTA is impossible to ignore. Europe negotiates as a consolidated bloc of twenty-seven states, representing advanced capital, multinational corporations and entrenched control over global value chains. India negotiates as a single country with vast internal disparities, where millions survive at the margins of the formal economy. Free trade agreements are never neutral instruments; they reward those who already dominate capital flows, intellectual property, finance, logistics and technology. In this equation, India is not viewed as an equal partner but as a vast market to be accessed, regulated and disciplined.
Nowhere is this imbalance clearer than in agriculture. The European Union continues to protect its farmers through the Common Agricultural Policy, insulating them from market volatility with heavy subsidies. At the same time, Europe presses India to open its agricultural markets in the name of free trade. For India, agriculture is not merely an economic sector; it is a livelihood system sustaining hundreds of millions. Any dilution of protection exposes Indian farmers to subsidised European competition, price volatility and corporate capture of supply chains. The result is not efficiency but dispossession, not reform but rural distress. India’s caution here is not protectionism; it is an assertion of survival and food sovereignty.
Equally troubling are the demands around intellectual property. The EU insists on stronger patent protections, longer data exclusivity and stricter enforcement mechanisms, particularly in pharmaceuticals. India’s generic drug industry, however, is not just a national asset — it is a global public good. It supplies affordable medicines to much of the Global South and plays a critical role in combating diseases such as HIV, tuberculosis and cancer. Strengthening intellectual property regimes to suit European pharmaceutical giants would raise drug prices, weaken public health autonomy and undermine India’s ability to act in the public interest. This is not innovation; it is the enclosure of knowledge for profit — a familiar colonial logic of extraction rearticulated through legal instruments.
Labour mobility exposes another layer of contradiction. India’s comparative advantage lies in services — information technology, healthcare, education and engineering — and in the mobility of skilled labour. Yet the European Union remains resistant to meaningful concessions on movement of people, even as it demands liberalisation of Indian markets. Capital is allowed to move freely, goods are encouraged to circulate, but workers from the Global South are securitised and restricted. An agreement that liberalises markets without facilitating mobility entrenches hierarchy and reveals the real priorities of so-called free trade.
The EU also claims the moral high ground on sustainability and climate responsibility. Environmental clauses, labour standards and carbon accounting are framed as ethical imperatives. Yet this posture is marked by historical amnesia. Europe industrialised through centuries of colonial extraction, fossil fuel dependence and ecological destruction, externalising environmental costs onto colonised territories. India is now asked to decarbonise rapidly, without having benefited from that historical carbon space and without receiving adequate financial or technological support. Mechanisms such as the Carbon Border Adjustment threaten to penalise Indian exports while ignoring Europe’s historic emissions debt. Climate responsibility is thus transformed into climate discipline.
In the digital sphere, the pattern repeats itself. Europe seeks access to India’s growing digital markets while pushing regulatory frameworks that favour established European firms. India’s efforts — however imperfect — to assert data sovereignty and regulate Big Tech are treated as obstacles rather than legitimate expressions of policy autonomy. Locking India into restrictive digital trade regimes risks reproducing technological dependency rather than fostering innovation.
At its core, the EU–India FTA is not about tariff reduction. It is about shaping India’s development trajectory. Europe seeks integration without empowerment, access without parity. India is invited into the global economy, but only on terms that preserve European advantage. This is the essence of neo-colonialism: participation without sovereignty, inclusion without equality.
If India is to engage meaningfully, it must draw clear red lines. Public health safeguards cannot be diluted. Agriculture and food sovereignty must remain protected. Labour mobility must be treated as integral to trade, not peripheral. Technology transfer and climate finance must be real, not rhetorical. Above all, India must preserve policy space to support its farmers, workers and small enterprises. Without these safeguards, the agreement risks reducing India to a consumer market and a low-cost production base.
Trade can be mutually beneficial, but only when power asymmetries are acknowledged rather than concealed. The EU–India Free Trade Agreement, as currently envisioned, does the opposite. It reproduces historical hierarchies through the language of rules, ethics and sustainability. The colonial mindset has not disappeared; it has merely adapted to the age of contracts and compliance.
India’s choice is not between isolation and integration. It is between sovereign engagement and neo-colonial incorporation. History suggests that the cost of choosing wrongly is borne not by negotiators, but by people.
Dr. Ranjan Solomon has worked in social justice movements since he was 19 years of age. After an accumulated period of 58 years working with oppressed and marginalized groups locally, nationally, and internationally, he has now turned a researcher-freelance writer focussed on questions of global and local/national justice.
30 January 2026
Source: countercurrents.org