The mobility discussion is interesting to me as someone who navigated US immigration.
Moving countries is hard. Not just paperwork hard, but restarting-your-life hard. Credit history, professional networks, understanding how things actually work versus how they officially work.
If the mobility framework makes it meaningfully easier for skilled workers to move between India and Europe, that's significant. Not because of labor economics, but because talented people having more options is generally good for everyone.
The H1B system in the US has created a lot of anxiety and frustration. Competition for that talent pool seems healthy.
The rub here is "skilled workers". Just after Brexit, the Boris Johnson Tory government adjusted immigration rules for "skilled" workers, and caused a civilisation-altering number of people (now known as the "Boriswave") to immigrate to the country, mostly from India, Africa, and other less developed areas. It's now known that almost every pay level and skill (or lack thereof) of job was eligible under the new rules, with some countries of origin, like Zimbabwe, having up to 10 dependents per worker on average IIRC. The same story has played out in the US with the "skilled" H1B visa scheme. People have lost all trust in governments to architect immigration laws in the interest of the natives, rather than giving big business carte blanche to import their own replacement workforce who will do any available job for the national minimum wage.
> talented people having more options is generally good for everyone
While I support free markets, that argument sounds a bit like the basis of the old 'trickle-down economics' and similar theories such as global free trade: Help the wealthy and the benefits will 'trickle down' to everyone else.
It turns out that if you help the wealthy, then the wealthy benefit. I know that doesn't sound like a surprising result when it's said that way, but the point is that the rest is a convenient fiction the wealthy tell themselves and politicians tell the public, in order to serve themselves.
In the US for example, those policies have led to historic increases in wealth for the few, and stagnated wages for the many. On the other hand, in less well off economies such as China and Brazil, the policies led to historic numbers lifted out of poverty - far more than anything in history. So that's a great result that we absolutely should not ignore or put a stop to. I support free trade.
But if the policy isn't specifically designed to benefit workers in the US, for example, if they are left to get theoretical second or third order theoretical benefits, it won't work for them. It's not 'generally good for everyone' unless it's made that way.
This is excellent, the duopoly discussions of the world mostly center around US and China and EU feels increasingly excluded while the rest of the world appears as footnote for good or bad reasons. I do hope this means there is enough dynamism in global trade.
The current challenge is that China has so much industrial overcapacity that it possibly can sell goods at near , sometimes even below mfg costs which makes it difficult if not impossible for India or other country made goods to even think of competing in the middle part of the value chain. Yet, it is the only hope for India to climb at least slightly even if they can never hope to get to the frontier of mfg. Chinese goals now are to amortize their existing mfg investments in any way possible but they still find it difficult to spur domestic consumption
Europe and the EU, Japan are vassal states curently occupied by the US. China, Russia, India are largely independent states. I am sure once Europe is not occupied, it will be talked about more.
I’m surprised, so it seems like most tariffs are falling towards zero on all products except agriculture and cars below 17,000$ in the coming few years.
Especially cars, India has had insane tariffs on luxury cars and motorcycles that will disappear, which is interesting. On the face this seems like a good deal for India as India can probably export much more than EU can to India except for a few sectors like Automobiles and Chips, but who knows, I assume EU officials seem to think the gains in a few high tech sectors are enough to offset the cheap goods on all other sectors.
It's all about German car makers wanting to sell more cars. The recent Mercosur deal was also about it. Of course, no one will buy them anyway since they are too expensive and low quality and Chinese cars are more accessible anyway.
The high tariffs on imported luxury cars never made much sense from the revenue point of view.
Our bureaucracy and governments has finally learnt how to do a Pareto analysis and learnt the difference between high volume/low margin vs low volume/high margins.
This will have no adverse affects on wages, there is definitely skill shortages in IT and nursing in the EU, anyone mentioning immigration is a racist xenophobe, there is no comparison to the UK nor Canada, do not talk about the huge amount of outsourcing to India already happening, your personal experiences are racism, is it cold in Russia?
Canada is embarking on a trade agreement with India and collectively our greatest fear is the immigration issue. Canada's immigration is already quite lop-sided.
> Canada's immigration is already quite lop-sided.
I don't even understand what "lop-sided" means here.
Would you say that Canada's oil and softwood businesses are lop-sided because we produce and export a lot of it? Or that the groceries' market is lop-sided because we don't produce a lot of it and therefore have to import?
Canada is an importer of people (not only from India) because it can't produce a lot of people. It is not different from groceries.
Canadians don't seem to have their priorities straight if they are more concerned about having a few more Indian neighbors than the US threatening to invade.
Switzerland has a free trade deal with India already and has a huge trade surplus (~25B). Free trade with china too and also a big trade surplus of around $20B.
I always thought of Brussels as the city where decisions go to die; that the EU discusses everything, poses for pictures and solves nothing. Then, in less than a month we have the trade deal EU-Mercosur and this one with India.
Maybe the Europeans can actually solve problems, after all.
1.) These trade deals were discussed for 20 years.
2.) Politics always needs discussion of loosy "all people that matter"
3.) EU by definition has a broad definition of "everyone matters". That's why it is lame but that is why it is interesting for countries outside of the EU becoming a member.
4.) EU does get things done. Maybe you don't read the news (where do you live?)
> Delhi and Brussels have also agreed on a mobility framework that eases restrictions for professionals to travel between India and the EU in the short term.
This is great news for professionals wishing to move to the EU, and I hope many will use this opportunity.
How are people mistaking what is clearly easier business visas to facilitate short term visits for migration? The EU can't commit to changes on migration because individual countries decide that.
Way to fall-off from being the one source of news everyone in "Anglo" countries in the Third-World used to turn to (and love and respect... however biased the news may have been).
Edit: am trying to access from US, I see a paywall. Good to hear from comments that other countries don't see a paywall.
Huh, viewing from India here - no paywall. BBC can be biased, but it is very useful to know what the British state media thinks. This article is neutral reporting with barely any "analyst opinion" flavor.
> US-based visitors to BBC.com will now have to pay $49.99 (£36) a year or $8.99 (£6.50) a month for access to most BBC News stories and features, and to stream the BBC News channel.
Only the US traffic has a paywall, there's none if you visit it from somewhere else. Understandable to charge people who don't pay for it with their taxes in my opinion, especially if you delivery videos and other expensive content for free without ads.
My favorite part of this timeline is watching (union) leftists celebrate free trade and gun ownership.
The sad part is that as soon as someone wearing a blue shirt enters office, they will get right in line with whatever the blue shirt says. I saw this with Obama's drone strikes in Syria...
You know it's a good deal for the EU and India given that China has been attempting a diplomacy blitz against the deal [0] for [1] years [2] now [3].
Indian DefenseTech and Dual Use technologies vendors can also now participate in ReArm Europe/Readiness2030 [4] (the EU's Defense Modernization fund) as part of the India-EU Defense Pact [5] that was also signed, especially after the French Government identified [6] a Chinese-led disinformation operation against French and Indian DefenseTech which the DGSE reported on with AP [7].
---
Edit: Notice how even on HN new accounts are suddenly popping up trying to make a wedge about this deal by dog whistling immigration even though mobility is not mentioned in the draft seen by Reuters and is a power that falls under individual state's sovereignity in the EU.
---
Edit 2: Note the subsequent whataboutism that has arisen. A nation trying to conduct disinformation ops against another nation is an offensive action. It's the tip of the iceberg of attempts of foreign interference within France [8]
---
Edit 3: Replying here
> I still don't know what 'diplomacy blitz' are you talking about.
The GT is the de facto voice of China's foreign policy, and has consistently viewed the EU-India deal as an attempt to isolate China. Additonally, Table Media (Germany's equivalent of Axios) noted He Lifeng's statements against the EU-India deal dueing Davos 2026, as the EU and India are investigating a compromise on CBAM for Indian exports.
---
Edit 4: Unsurprisingly, the entire HN thread has been derailed by immigration.
As to your point [7], no need for China to "spread doubts about the performance of French-made Rafale ", I have at this very moment this book on my desk: Le Pouvoir sans visage: Le complexe militaro-industriel [1], written by a Pierre Marion [2], former head of the SDECE/DGSE in the early '80s, where said Pierre Marion does the same thing, i.e. he heavily criticises the Rafale programme and Dassault (the company and the man himself, Serge Dassault)
> On mobility, the India-EU FTA provides a facilitative and predictable framework for business mobility covering short-term, temporary and business travel in both directions.
Do you predict short term business travel from India will increase youth unemployment in Europe? Why?
Don’t you think a larger export market for EU products like cars will increase employment in the EU? That would be my prediction.
Immigration is not part of the EU-India Trade Deal [0] nor the EU-India Defense Pact [1].
The only mention of mobility (not even immigration) is a vaguely worded MoU with no commitment of execution [2].
Instead, Europeans should be thankful that India has now reduced tariffs on European engineering and chemical goods to below what Chinese transshippers paid via the India-ASEAN FTA thus giving European manufacturers a much needed export market defended against Chinese overproduction, and that India will now join South Korea and Japan in arming Ukraine and the entire EU as part of ReArm Europe/Readiness2030 [3]. Heck, India has already begun defending Greece [4] and Cyprus [5] against Turkish aggression in the Aegean and investing in European infrastructure development [6].
The only people who would be opposed to the EU-India Trade and Defense Deals are those who want the EU to remain a perpetual junior partner to the US or China. In fact, China has a history of leveraging disinformation [7] to undermine EU-India relations.
Given the pattern of accounts on this thread and how it was derailed by the boogeyman of immigration, there are hallmarks of a spamoflauge operation similar to what the EU-Mercosur deal faced.
Also, individual EU states have always had the final say on immigration policy within their borders.
> Delhi and Brussels have also agreed on a mobility framework that eases restrictions for professionals to travel between India and the EU in the short term.
That should hopefully help increasing the much needed immigration.
The much needed immigration should rather come from countries with similar society and culture to us Europeans, rather than India. Europe couldn't be more different to India and should remain as it was pre-~2014.
Culturally more similar would be South-America I'd say. Them I wouldn't mind at all.
augusteo|1 month ago
Moving countries is hard. Not just paperwork hard, but restarting-your-life hard. Credit history, professional networks, understanding how things actually work versus how they officially work.
If the mobility framework makes it meaningfully easier for skilled workers to move between India and Europe, that's significant. Not because of labor economics, but because talented people having more options is generally good for everyone.
The H1B system in the US has created a lot of anxiety and frustration. Competition for that talent pool seems healthy.
FiniteField|1 month ago
mmooss|1 month ago
While I support free markets, that argument sounds a bit like the basis of the old 'trickle-down economics' and similar theories such as global free trade: Help the wealthy and the benefits will 'trickle down' to everyone else.
It turns out that if you help the wealthy, then the wealthy benefit. I know that doesn't sound like a surprising result when it's said that way, but the point is that the rest is a convenient fiction the wealthy tell themselves and politicians tell the public, in order to serve themselves.
In the US for example, those policies have led to historic increases in wealth for the few, and stagnated wages for the many. On the other hand, in less well off economies such as China and Brazil, the policies led to historic numbers lifted out of poverty - far more than anything in history. So that's a great result that we absolutely should not ignore or put a stop to. I support free trade.
But if the policy isn't specifically designed to benefit workers in the US, for example, if they are left to get theoretical second or third order theoretical benefits, it won't work for them. It's not 'generally good for everyone' unless it's made that way.
Espressosaurus|1 month ago
Might we see a European flowering as the US chokes itself into a regional power?
pjc50|1 month ago
iberator|1 month ago
[deleted]
iberator|1 month ago
[deleted]
newyankee|1 month ago
The current challenge is that China has so much industrial overcapacity that it possibly can sell goods at near , sometimes even below mfg costs which makes it difficult if not impossible for India or other country made goods to even think of competing in the middle part of the value chain. Yet, it is the only hope for India to climb at least slightly even if they can never hope to get to the frontier of mfg. Chinese goals now are to amortize their existing mfg investments in any way possible but they still find it difficult to spur domestic consumption
skinnymuch|1 month ago
sashank_1509|1 month ago
Especially cars, India has had insane tariffs on luxury cars and motorcycles that will disappear, which is interesting. On the face this seems like a good deal for India as India can probably export much more than EU can to India except for a few sectors like Automobiles and Chips, but who knows, I assume EU officials seem to think the gains in a few high tech sectors are enough to offset the cheap goods on all other sectors.
ksec|1 month ago
orloffm|1 month ago
SanjayMehta|1 month ago
Our bureaucracy and governments has finally learnt how to do a Pareto analysis and learnt the difference between high volume/low margin vs low volume/high margins.
lostlogin|1 month ago
In a cost of living crisis, maybe this is seen as a helpful import?
hexbin010|1 month ago
Did I miss anything?
alecco|1 month ago
whjte|1 month ago
[deleted]
breitling|1 month ago
diego_moita|1 month ago
I don't even understand what "lop-sided" means here.
Would you say that Canada's oil and softwood businesses are lop-sided because we produce and export a lot of it? Or that the groceries' market is lop-sided because we don't produce a lot of it and therefore have to import?
Canada is an importer of people (not only from India) because it can't produce a lot of people. It is not different from groceries.
mlmonkey|1 month ago
uv-depression|1 month ago
Citation very much needed. This sounds like _your_ concern that you're trying to launder through projecting onto the rest of the country.
mekdoonggi|1 month ago
franktankbank|1 month ago
comrade1234|1 month ago
PlatoIsADisease|1 month ago
These are a bit of a legacy thing that countries can't just develop.
diego_moita|1 month ago
I always thought of Brussels as the city where decisions go to die; that the EU discusses everything, poses for pictures and solves nothing. Then, in less than a month we have the trade deal EU-Mercosur and this one with India.
Maybe the Europeans can actually solve problems, after all.
snowpid|1 month ago
4.) EU does get things done. Maybe you don't read the news (where do you live?)
etyhhgfff|1 month ago
I expect something similar with the India Deal, there is always some form of Veto in the EU that makes it very hard to act as a unit.
benterix|1 month ago
This is great news for professionals wishing to move to the EU, and I hope many will use this opportunity.
nindalf|1 month ago
rawgabbit|1 month ago
k4rli|1 month ago
[deleted]
heraldgeezer|1 month ago
ksec|1 month ago
johneth|1 month ago
UK-EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU%E2%80%93UK_Trade_and_Cooper...
nikanj|1 month ago
profsummergig|1 month ago
Way to fall-off from being the one source of news everyone in "Anglo" countries in the Third-World used to turn to (and love and respect... however biased the news may have been).
Edit: am trying to access from US, I see a paywall. Good to hear from comments that other countries don't see a paywall.
lenkite|1 month ago
dewey|1 month ago
Only the US traffic has a paywall, there's none if you visit it from somewhere else. Understandable to charge people who don't pay for it with their taxes in my opinion, especially if you delivery videos and other expensive content for free without ads.
sam_lowry_|1 month ago
deafpolygon|1 month ago
PlatoIsADisease|1 month ago
The sad part is that as soon as someone wearing a blue shirt enters office, they will get right in line with whatever the blue shirt says. I saw this with Obama's drone strikes in Syria...
testing22321|1 month ago
Everyone is just going to move on and ignore the silly tariffs.
pidgeon_lover|1 month ago
Gud|1 month ago
alephnerd|1 month ago
You know it's a good deal for the EU and India given that China has been attempting a diplomacy blitz against the deal [0] for [1] years [2] now [3].
Indian DefenseTech and Dual Use technologies vendors can also now participate in ReArm Europe/Readiness2030 [4] (the EU's Defense Modernization fund) as part of the India-EU Defense Pact [5] that was also signed, especially after the French Government identified [6] a Chinese-led disinformation operation against French and Indian DefenseTech which the DGSE reported on with AP [7].
---
Edit: Notice how even on HN new accounts are suddenly popping up trying to make a wedge about this deal by dog whistling immigration even though mobility is not mentioned in the draft seen by Reuters and is a power that falls under individual state's sovereignity in the EU.
---
Edit 2: Note the subsequent whataboutism that has arisen. A nation trying to conduct disinformation ops against another nation is an offensive action. It's the tip of the iceberg of attempts of foreign interference within France [8]
---
Edit 3: Replying here
> I still don't know what 'diplomacy blitz' are you talking about.
The GT is the de facto voice of China's foreign policy, and has consistently viewed the EU-India deal as an attempt to isolate China. Additonally, Table Media (Germany's equivalent of Axios) noted He Lifeng's statements against the EU-India deal dueing Davos 2026, as the EU and India are investigating a compromise on CBAM for Indian exports.
---
Edit 4: Unsurprisingly, the entire HN thread has been derailed by immigration.
---
[0] - https://table.media/china/thema-des-tages/indien-weshalb-chi...
[1] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1222983.shtml
[2] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1222993.shtml
[3] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202010/1205230.shtml
[4] - https://theprint.in/diplomacy/india-eu-sign-security-defence...
[5] - https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/security-and-defence-eu-and-...
[6] - https://www.defense.gouv.fr/desinformation/nos-analyses-froi...
[7] - https://apnews.com/article/france-china-pakistan-india-defen...
[8] - https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2024/07/02/deux-espio...
modo_mario|1 month ago
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_...
paganel|1 month ago
[1] https://www.amazon.fr/Pouvoir-sans-visage-complexe-militaro-...)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Marion
nindalf|1 month ago
RobertoG|1 month ago
tokai|1 month ago
alecco|1 month ago
[deleted]
jaredklewis|1 month ago
> On mobility, the India-EU FTA provides a facilitative and predictable framework for business mobility covering short-term, temporary and business travel in both directions.
Do you predict short term business travel from India will increase youth unemployment in Europe? Why?
Don’t you think a larger export market for EU products like cars will increase employment in the EU? That would be my prediction.
surgical_fire|1 month ago
I mean, if your problem is unemployment, leaning how to read would go a long way.
alephnerd|1 month ago
The only mention of mobility (not even immigration) is a vaguely worded MoU with no commitment of execution [2].
Instead, Europeans should be thankful that India has now reduced tariffs on European engineering and chemical goods to below what Chinese transshippers paid via the India-ASEAN FTA thus giving European manufacturers a much needed export market defended against Chinese overproduction, and that India will now join South Korea and Japan in arming Ukraine and the entire EU as part of ReArm Europe/Readiness2030 [3]. Heck, India has already begun defending Greece [4] and Cyprus [5] against Turkish aggression in the Aegean and investing in European infrastructure development [6].
The only people who would be opposed to the EU-India Trade and Defense Deals are those who want the EU to remain a perpetual junior partner to the US or China. In fact, China has a history of leveraging disinformation [7] to undermine EU-India relations.
Given the pattern of accounts on this thread and how it was derailed by the boogeyman of immigration, there are hallmarks of a spamoflauge operation similar to what the EU-Mercosur deal faced.
Also, individual EU states have always had the final say on immigration policy within their borders.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/details-eu-india-trade-d...
[1] - https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/security-and-defence-eu-and-...
[2] - https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_...
[3] - https://theprint.in/diplomacy/india-eu-sign-security-defence...
[4] - https://geetha.mil.gr/kyklos-synomilion-staff-talks-kai-ypog...
[5] - https://www.gov.cy/proedros-proedria/koini-diakiryxi-gia-tin...
[6] - https://www.lagazzettamarittima.it/2025/10/30/rixi-in-india-...
[7] - https://www.defense.gouv.fr/desinformation/nos-analyses-froi...
dude250711|1 month ago
That should hopefully help increasing the much needed immigration.
k4rli|1 month ago
Culturally more similar would be South-America I'd say. Them I wouldn't mind at all.
eklavya|1 month ago
oytis|1 month ago
unknown|1 month ago
[deleted]
alephnerd|1 month ago
Edit: The BBC article is wrong, as can be seen by the draft reported by Reuters [0]
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/details-eu-india-trade-d...