The India-EU Free Trade Agreement will be signed on December 16
The Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between India and the European Union (EU) will be signed on December 16, 2026, two diplomatic sources separately confirmed to The Hindu.
This will be part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s upcoming December trips to Canada, the US and Belgium, where three separate FTAs are currently either being negotiated or in the process of being approved.
Furthermore, as the EU’s free trade agreement has received “majority approval” in Europe, it will not require separate ratification by each EU country once the European Council gives its consent.
The next step, after the signature in December, will be passage through the European Parliament, which will take another one to two months and pave the way for introduction in “early 2027”.
Also read | India-EU FTA moves one step closer to reality as European Commission pushes for signature
Smooth sailing for the EU deal
“The latest development was that the European Commission has finalized the text of the agreement and sent it to the European Council,” a diplomatic source told The Hindu. “The signature is scheduled for December 16, after which it will go to the European Parliament, which will only add about 1-2 months to the process.”
A second source confirmed the date, adding that it would be held in Brussels with Mr Modi present.
Talks on an India-EU free trade agreement, which leaders on both sides call the “mother of all deals”, resumed in June 2022 after a long hiatus and were concluded in January 2026.
“The agreement has majority support in Europe and therefore will not need to be ratified individually in every EU country,” the first source added. The reason for this support is that both sides agreed to leave contentious matters out of the deal and not make “the best the enemy of the good”.
Also read | Expect EU to sign FTA and India-Canada talks to be finalized by year-end, government says
Canada is calling
Mr. Modi is expected to travel to Canada first, probably around December 12, ahead of the G-20 summit in Miami, which will be hosted by US President Donald Trump. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney confirmed the visit that trade talks have made “good progress” and that India is an “extremely important relationship on many levels”, including people-to-people relations, security trade and economic ties.
“Our commitment to each other, Prime Minister Modi and I, last year at the G20 (in Canada) was to try to close this year’s G20 (in the US). That’s mid-December, December 14-15,” Mr Carney told reporters at a briefing in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.
In an interview with Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper, Indian High Commissioner to Canada Dinesh Patnaik also confirmed the visit, adding that he expected the India-Canada Free Trade Agreement to be “completed by November” and that Mr. Modi would be in Canada in December to sign the deal.
Commerce Minister Rajesh Agrawal has separately confirmed that this is largely the timeline India has been operating on as well.
Also read | 100% US tariff threat: Can India’s new trade deals reduce its dependence on America?
To the USA
After that, Mr. Modi is expected to attend the G20 meeting in Miami, where the India-US interim agreement on trade and a larger bilateral trade agreement (BTA) will also be on the agenda. Both agreements have already missed several deadlines.
Jointly announced by Mr Modi and Mr Trump in February 2025, the BTA was supposed to be completed by “autumn 2025”, but was then scuttled due to the 50% reciprocal and punitive tariffs imposed by the US on imports from India in July-August 2025.
In February 2026, the two countries issued a joint statement committing to an interim trade agreement, which officials on both sides said would be completed by March-April 2026. They also pledged to continue work on the BTA.
Neither deal has so far materialized and now faces further tension over a new law passed by the US that could lead to tariffs of up to 100% on India based on its imports of Russian oil and natural gas.
Published – 24 Sep 2026 01:00 IST