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Cameron calls for India trade deal
Wednesday, 6th September 2006 Following his recent visit to India, Conservative Leader David Cameron has called for an EU-India free trade deal. Under EU trade rules, the UK cannot by itself agree a free trade deal with this vast Commonwealth country, since all the UK's terms of trade are determined by Brussels. The thriving Indian economy is the second fastest growing major economy in the world, with a GDP growth rate of 8.4% at the end of the first quarter of 2005–2006. As the world’s second largest country, it has a rapidly emerging middle class which is already larger than the total population of the UK, and it is becoming a major exporter on world markets. Welcoming Cameron's initiative, East Midlands MEP Roger Helmer pointed out that while the EU has negotiated, or is negotiating, trade deals with dozens of countries round the world, it has conspicuously omitted former British colonies (or "the Anglosphere", as some people call the English-speaking world) from its arrangements. Mr Helmer believes that Britain, for a range of historical, cultural and linguistic reasons, does a disproportionate amount of its external trade with Anglosphere countries like the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India, and therefore the EU's trade bias against these countries works against Britain's interests. Speaking in Strasbourg today, Mr Helmer said: "I remember going myself with the Singapore Ambassador to speak to Pascal Lamy, Peter Mandelson's predecessor as EU Trade Commissioner, to urge a free trade deal with Singapore, but Lamy seemed to think that a free trade deal was a sort of prize the EU would offer to Singapore in exchange for more influence on developments in South East Asia, rather than a mutually beneficial deal that we should do for its own sake". |