India, EU Leaders Touch On IPR, Innovation, ICTs, Pharmaceuticals

The leaders of India and the European Union today in Brussels discussed a wide range of topics including intellectual property rights – including geographical indications – innovation, digital issues, and health and pharmaceuticals.

But details on what was said were few.

The 13th EU-India Summit was held on 30 March. The EU was represented by Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, and Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission. India was represented by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi.

All of the available documents from the meeting are available here.

Below are some highlights from the joint statement:

“24. The leaders praised the ongoing cooperation on technical and operational issues, including exchange of best practices in the field of Intellectual Property Rights and public procurement. They also noted the importance of geographical indications as a way to support local quality products in global trade.

30. The leaders welcomed the successful EU-India ICT dialogue and ICT business dialogue. They encouraged increasing links between the ‘Digital India’ initiative and the EU’s ‘Digital Single Market’ through enhanced cooperation in cyber security, ICT standardisation, Internet Governance, research and innovation, (e.g. language technologies, establishment of a network of EU and Indian innovative start-up companies). They agreed to advance Business to Business cooperation through increased presence of Indian IT-ITeS companies in EU and EU companies’ active participation in the Digital India programme. They welcomed the prospects of, finalising a Joint Declaration on the next generation of global communication 5G networks in 2016.

31. The leaders welcomed the extension of the India-EU Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement until 2020, reaffirming their shared commitment to research and innovation as drivers of social and economic development. The EU and India aim to intensify their cooperation in frontier areas of S&T and in addressing current global challenges including health, and welcomed the setting up of mechanisms for jointly financing research and innovation projects.

34. The leaders committed to further strengthen the current EU-India dialogues in a wide array of sectors including pharmaceuticals, trade & industry issues, agriculture, fisheries, food and feed safety. They underlined the value of ongoing engagement on multilateral, macroeconomic and financial matters. The EU and India looked forward to the start of implementation, of their Horizontal Aviation Agreement.”