A new urgency

New Delhi must move forward on FTA with EU

The conventional wisdom that globalisation has gone into reverse and that the world is turning against trade agreements and openness was delivered a major shock last week. The world’s largest trading entity, the European Union, came to an agreement with four of South America’s biggest economies — Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Argentina — the four surviving full members of the trading bloc Mercosur, which was till recently the world’s fourth-largest of such blocs. (Venezuela, which was also a member, has been suspended for over two years.) Once free trade begins between these two blocs, they will form by far the