High-level conference on Free Trade Agreement in India

Dr. Preeta George, Prof. Dr. Dennis A. De, Dr. Leopold-Theodor Heldman, Peter Young, Dr. Sesha Iyer

The first conference organised by the Centre for European Business Studies (CEBS) took place on 26th and 27th November 2010 at SP Jain Institute for Management in Mumbai.

One year after its foundation it is clear that CEBS, which offers postgraduate study programmes and training courses in the field of management, is highly successful. For its founder and director Professor Dr. Dennis A. De the aim that CEBS can be self-financing within two years has moved a step closer.
The EU is currently supporting the setting up of four study centres in India with various specialisations (Business, Peace Studies, Sociology). All the centres, except CEBS in Mumbai, are run by Indian universities in cooperation with a European university. CEBS is the only European centre in India that is also run by Europeans, in this case ESB Business School of Reutlingen University.
CEBS will organise annual conferences on economic topics concerning Europe and India. The subject of the first conference was the implications of the planned EU-India Free Trade Agreement.

Because European companies find the competition increasingly tougher within their own markets, they are looking for opportunities to grow outside the EU in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) with large populations and high growth rates. Amongst the BRIC countries India has many advantages. As the largest democracy in the world, with an Anglo-Saxon based legal system and English as an official language, the barriers to market entry for European companies are lower in India than in other countries.

The European Union and India have been negotiating a bilateral Free Trade Agreement which deals with the removal of tariffs and other barriers to exports. The latest round of negotiations started in April 2010 in Brussels and these should end in a final agreement, however many points of controversy are still being discussed.

At the start of the CEBS conference there was a panel discussion in which high-level representatives from politics, economics and the world of research from both Europe and India took part. The discussion on ways towards a Free Trade Agreement was chaired by Bernhard Steinruecke, Director General of the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce, and the panellists were Marc Llistosella (Managing Director of Daimler India), Peter Young (Head of Trade and Economic Affairs of the European Union Delegation in India), Tobias Unkelbach (Director at the Association of German Banks)  und Manab Majumdar (Assistant Secretary General of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry).
After the panel discussion there were presentations on general topics as well as for three specially chosen sectors: financial services, car industry and textile industry.

Before the conference, academics worldwide had been called upon to submit papers with their findings on research topics relevant to the EU-India Free Trade Agreement. At the end of the second day of the conference an international jury chaired by Prof. Dr. Jörg Naeve of ESB Business School of Reutlingen University, awarded a prize worth 100,000 Rupees for the best paper on behalf of CEBS. The conference was supported by Bloomberg TV and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry).

More than 100 participants, including many business leaders, took part in the two-day conference and Prof. Dr. Dennis De’s organising team were satisfied with the success of the event. The way in which the conference was received shows that Indian-European relations are on the right track. The location of the conference, the Oberoi Trident Hotel, was also symbolic because it was the scene of one of the terror attacks in 2008. Holding the conference on the 2nd anniversary of the attacks in exactly the same place where one of the attacks took place, sent a clear signal that life goes on and that global integration, including economic integration, cannot be held up.