India-EU ministerial on FTA likely in June-July

A senior European Union representative said here on Tuesday that the body would soon change its Customs laws to address the issue of seizures of Indian generic drug shipments while en route for export to other countries.

This comes a few days after commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma threatened to take the EU to the World Trade Organisation's appellate tribunal on the issue.

Apart from changing its rules to avoid such incidents, the representative, Daniele Smadja, head of a visiting delegation of the European Commission, the EU's executive body, also said trade ministers from there and India would be meeting by the end of June or early July to review the ongoing negotiations on a free trade agreement. The agreement is expected to be in place by October.

The interception of generic drugs from India started almost two years earlier, when a shipment en route to Brazil was seized by the Dutch customs during transit, by citing alleged violation of European patent laws.

"The issue (seizure of drugs) has just happened once but we are making sure that it never happens again, so we are changing one of our regulations in order to make sure that there is no confusion in the minds of our customs. We are in the process and contemplating some clarification of our internal European legislation to make sure customs have clear instructions and that no such problems take place," Smadja told reporters here.

She said the generic drugs issue was being discussed in the context of the FTA. "We have both agreed that in the IPR chapter, there should be no limit of the Indian capacity to produce and export life-saving medicines."