[{"bbox": [85, 153, 1124, 337], "category": "Text", "text": "Agreement and the external dimension of the European Green Deal. The action will contribute to the implementation of the EU Gender Action Plan (GAP III)² and to women's economic empowerment in key areas of the green deal, digitalisation agenda and start-up entrepreneurship. In addition, given the EU commitment to promoting gender equality through its trade policy and cooperation on research and innovation, the proposed action will create opportunities to undertake, where relevant, ex-ante impact assessments towards ensuring the trade and investment agreements envisaged include strong provisions on gender equality including compliance with relevant UN/ILO Conventions."}, {"bbox": [85, 363, 1124, 760], "category": "Text", "text": "Last but not least, on December 1st 2021, the European Commission and the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy launched the **Global Gateway**, the new European Strategy to boost smart, clean and secure links in digital, energy and transport and strengthen health, education and research systems across the world. It stands for sustainable and trusted connections that work for people and the planet, to tackle the most pressing global challenges, from climate change and protecting the environment, to improving health security and boosting competitiveness and global supply chains. The new Multiannual Financial Framework, the EU's strategy on the Indo-Pacific and the Global Gateway Partnerships Joint Communication lay the groundwork for enhanced future cooperation with India on connectivity actions. Trusted connectivity is important for the EU, it already represented 16% of our actions in the previous Financial Framework. For the period 2021-2027, it is expected to increase in line with the EU's Global Gateway strategy. It will take into account hard and soft connectivity and span across different key sectors such as digital, energy, people-to-people and transport.\nWith this action, the EU will start building important blocks for digital support, climate and energy by strengthening cooperation in the digital sector between India and EU and by fostering policy dialogue and cooperation in the areas of clean energy, energy markets, energy efficiency, just energy transition and climate action."}, {"bbox": [85, 803, 342, 834], "category": "Section-header", "text": "## 2.2 Problem Analysis"}, {"bbox": [85, 850, 1124, 1143], "category": "Text", "text": "India needs to address a number of challenges, from population growth, increasing urbanisation, energy access and energy security, climate change and biodiversity loss, to persisting deep inequalities. Its population is expected to surpass China's between 2026 and 2028 (with commensurate development issues) and to peak around 2050. Its **energy consumption** is expected to more than double by 2035, with electricity demand predicted to more than triple by 2045. India has set ambitious targets under its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), aiming to produce 40% of its total energy needs through renewable resources and reducing emissions intensity by 33-35% by 2030 as compared to 2005 levels. This ambition reinforces the urgency to develop international technology partnerships for development and the implementation of climate friendly energy technologies as well as mitigation and adaptation to **climate change**. Leveraging investments and strategically engaging India at bilateral and global levels through policy dialogue is important in promoting more sustainable development pathways, whether on the human, economic, social or environmental dimensions."}, {"bbox": [85, 1168, 1124, 1275], "category": "Text", "text": "**Trade** between India and the EU has seen a steady increase with almost EUR100 billion in annual bilateral trade at present. Over the years, EU FDI into India has also grown steadily, with the EU accounting for 11% of the total FDI inflows into India in FY2020-21. Having said that, given the size of our respective economies, the untapped potential is much more- in both trade and investment."}, {"bbox": [85, 1301, 1124, 1539], "category": "Text", "text": "The EU's strong position in trade is coming under increasing pressure, from being India's second largest to third largest trading partner in goods. Although India represents one of the fastest growing economies, it has extremely high entry barriers to trade and an ever-increasing list of non-tariff barriers, restricting EU business activity while encouraging transfer of production to India. The barriers include technical barriers to trade (TBT), sanitary and phyto-sanitary (SPS) measures, deviation from international standards and agreements, as well as discrimination based on legislative or administrative measures by India, affecting a wide range of sectors, including goods, services, investment and public procurement. Although the EU is trying to engage India on the swift resolution of certain irritants as low hanging fruits ahead of the start of the negotiations to send a positive signal to EU Member States regarding their commitment towards the FTA, old and new market access barriers"}, {"bbox": [85, 1572, 1145, 1647], "category": "Footnote", "text": "² The draft Country Level Implementation Plan (CLIP) for India foresees addressing the challenges and harnessing the opportunities offered by the green transition and the digital transformation as a thematic priority for promoting gender equality and women empowerment."}, {"bbox": [1038, 1682, 1144, 1706], "category": "Page-footer", "text": "Page 6 of 24"}]