Explanation:

Within Asia, India has signed bilateral FTAs with Sri Lanka, Afghanistan, Thailand, Singapore, Bhutan, Nepal, Korea, Malaysia and Japan. There have also been two regional trade agreements, the South Asian Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA) and the India-Association of Southeast Asian Nations Agreement (ASEAN). Outside Asia, FTAs have been agreed with Chile and MERCOSUR.
India has not signed a FTA with European Union yet though the talks are likely to resume soon as of april, 2018.

Following are some of the issues involved:

• First, the European Union, including the United Kingdom, accounts for about 17 per cent of India’s total exports. Trade between India and the EU is well balanced, with the former’s exports to the region in FY17 at $47 billion and imports at $42 billion. Garments were India’s biggest exports segment, followed by engineering goods and gems & jewellery. Similarly, the country imports capital goods and gems and precious stones worth billions of dollars from the EU.
• Europe, which has suffered years of poor growth caused by a series of debt crises, is part of a global economic resurgence that could continue in 2018. It is the right time to resume talks as GDP and employment in Europe is picking up.
• Commenced in 2007, the EU-India FTA was renamed Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement (BTIA). The last sets of negotiations were carried out in Brussels in 2013. After this, further negotiations were stalled.
• India and Germany agreed on the need to resume free trade talks between India and the European Union in May 2017, when Prime Minister Modi met German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Germany.

Why did the talks stagnate?

• Even Merkel had cited the lack of a bilateral investment protection agreement between India and EU members. India decided to cancel most bilateral investment agreements with EU member states in 2016,saying they were outdated.
• The EU now wants to negotiate the Bilateral Investment Treaty before it starts negotiating the EU-India BTIA. However, India will not accept one of the clauses of the earlier Bilateral Investment Protection and Promotion Agreement (BIPPA), which allowed EU investors to challenge the government in front of an international tribunal.
• Also, the strong stand continues on the broad contours of the proposed FTA, including EU’s insistence that India cut import duties on auto parts and wine and strengthen the intellectual property rights regime and the Indian demand for more liberalisation in services.
• India is also demanding greater flexibility on data privacy and data-secure nation status from the EU. The country is among the nations not considered as data secure by the EU.