Minister of State for Agriculture & Farmers Welfare Sushri Shobha Karandlaje and H.E. Mr. Janusz Wojciechowski, European Commissioner for Agriculture held a meeting at New Delhi today. The agenda of the meeting was to discuss agricultural policies and initiatives towards sustainable food systems, market access issues, India-EU FTA negotiations and bilateral agreement of Organic Products.

MoS highlighted the recent initiatives by the Government of India including National Mission on Sustainable Agriculture (NMSA) and National Innovations in Climate Resilient Agriculture (NICRA) schemes to make agriculture sustainable and climate resilient.

MoS also raised the market access issues that are creating trade barriers in export of agricultural products to the EU and recalled India’s request for Protected Geographical Indicator (GI) status for Basmati Rice pending with the European Commission.

The European Commissioner congratulated India on its successful Presidency of G20. He assured that the concerns raised by Indian side are under active consideration and will be addressed soon. He also recalled the market access requests of EU countries which are under consideration of India. MoS informed that many pending market access requests from EU countries have been finalized in recent months and remaining issues will be resolved in due course.

The European Commissioner highlighted the importance of the Joint Working Group mechanism to resolve issues of mutual concern and expressed their readiness to hold its next meeting. MoS agreed and suggested holding the next meeting of the Joint Working Group in early 2024.

Both sides supported continuity in discussions and regular dialogue on policies in the agriculture sector.

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