The mobility discussion is interesting to me as someone who navigated US immigration.
Moving countries is hard. Not just paperwork hard, but restarting-your-life hard. Credit history, professional networks, understanding how things actually work versus how they officially work.
If the mobility framework makes it meaningfully easier for skilled workers to move between India and Europe, that's significant. Not because of labor economics, but because talented people having more options is generally good for everyone.
The H1B system in the US has created a lot of anxiety and frustration. Competition for that talent pool seems healthy.
The rub here is "skilled workers". Just after Brexit, the Boris Johnson Tory government adjusted immigration rules for "skilled" workers, and caused a civilisation-altering number of people (now known as the "Boriswave") to immigrate to the country, mostly from India, Africa, and other less developed areas. It's now known that almost every pay level and skill (or lack thereof) of job was eligible under the new rules, with some countries of origin, like Zimbabwe, having up to 10 dependents per worker on average IIRC. The same story has played out in the US with the "skilled" H1B visa scheme. People have lost all trust in governments to architect immigration laws in the interest of the natives, rather than giving big business carte blanche to import their own replacement workforce who will do any available job for the national minimum wage.
"Skilled" sounds nice because it sounds like "doctors, educated" but the only real SAFE way to ensure it's actually skilled is make the dollar amounts so high that no company will want to use it to import cheap near-slave labor.
> like Zimbabwe, having up to 10 dependents per worker on average IIRC
Some developed countries have terrible demographics and need fresh kids.
I am expecting that sometime soon New Zealand will start accepting unskilled immigrants if they have >2 healthy kids under 10 years old. It wouldn't surprise me if the dept of internal affairs already has a soft rule to encourage that.
At some point many countries with shitty demographics are going to have to start competing to import kids.
> talented people having more options is generally good for everyone
While I support free markets, that argument sounds a bit like the basis of the old 'trickle-down economics' and similar theories such as global free trade: Help the wealthy and the benefits will 'trickle down' to everyone else.
It turns out that if you help the wealthy, then the wealthy benefit. I know that doesn't sound like a surprising result when it's said that way, but the point is that the rest is a convenient fiction the wealthy tell themselves and politicians tell the public, in order to serve themselves.
In the US for example, those policies have led to historic increases in wealth for the few, and stagnated wages for the many. On the other hand, in less well off economies such as China and Brazil, the policies led to historic numbers lifted out of poverty - far more than anything in history. So that's a great result that we absolutely should not ignore or put a stop to. I support free trade.
But if the policy isn't specifically designed to benefit workers in the US, for example, if they are left to get theoretical second or third order theoretical benefits, it won't work for them. It's not 'generally good for everyone' unless it's made that way.
I don't understand what your point is when comparing how similar policies helped general population prosperity in less-well-off countries to the USA you say only benefiting the wealthy.
What should I be getting out of your argument? Asking in good faith.
For example, that there's more to it than that simple rule, or that once a certain level of general population prosperity is reached it stops working, or that impoverished populations have a culture that better benefits from such policies... ?
But no, you can make 3-4x in the US. That’s not an exaggeration. And before someone says ‘free healthcare’, big-tech employers in the US provide pretty nice insurance for employees that caps maximum out of pocket expenses to about a week of your salary.
EU (except Zurich and London) tech salaries have sort of stagnated to a point that you make about the same in Bangalore, and spend significantly more.
It's an MoU to "discuss" mobility with no commitment to actually decide anything: "[a]dopted as a memorandum of understanding in parallel with the finalisation of the FTA, offers an excellent opportunity for us to cooperate on facilitating labour mobility, supporting skills development and capacity building, and working on skills and qualification frameworks" [0].
Immigration remains under the purview of individual EU member states. And immigration/mobility is out of scope of the actual EU-India FTA deal and the EU-India Defense Pact deal.
Notice how this entire thread got derailed by low karma and newish accounts dogwhistling immigration instead of discussing how the deal expanded European (and India) industrial and chemical exports to India (and Europe) by giving them a tariff rate under that which is Chinese transshipped products via ASEAN get thus making European (and Indian) capital goods cost effective and now includes India as part of ReArm Europe [1] - the EU's defense fund for European and Ukrainian rearmament [2].
Who needs Russian backed farmer disinfo networks [3] when you have anonymous "software engineer" and "OSINT" accounts stirring $hit to try and undermine the EU-India relationship [4]. That said, the deal will go through because the right businesses and unions were mollified over the past 2-3 years building up to this.
This is excellent, the duopoly discussions of the world mostly center around US and China and EU feels increasingly excluded while the rest of the world appears as footnote for good or bad reasons. I do hope this means there is enough dynamism in global trade.
The current challenge is that China has so much industrial overcapacity that it possibly can sell goods at near , sometimes even below mfg costs which makes it difficult if not impossible for India or other country made goods to even think of competing in the middle part of the value chain. Yet, it is the only hope for India to climb at least slightly even if they can never hope to get to the frontier of mfg. Chinese goals now are to amortize their existing mfg investments in any way possible but they still find it difficult to spur domestic consumption
Europe and the EU, Japan are vassal states curently occupied by the US. China, Russia, India are largely independent states. I am sure once Europe is not occupied, it will be talked about more.
I’m surprised, so it seems like most tariffs are falling towards zero on all products except agriculture and cars below 17,000$ in the coming few years.
Especially cars, India has had insane tariffs on luxury cars and motorcycles that will disappear, which is interesting. On the face this seems like a good deal for India as India can probably export much more than EU can to India except for a few sectors like Automobiles and Chips, but who knows, I assume EU officials seem to think the gains in a few high tech sectors are enough to offset the cheap goods on all other sectors.
All automotive goods in India below the $17,800 pricepoint are essentially "Made in India", not China, and in a lot of cases exported abroad under Renault, Suzuki, Toyota, Hyundai, and Mitsubishi badges or directly sold by Mahindra (especially South America and South Africa) or Tata.
Chinese manufacturers got hounded out and as a result the PRC tried [0] and failed [1] to weaponize the WTO against India [0] for India trying to subsidize GreenTech driven industrialization.
Chinese manufacturers are allowed to enter India, but on terms similar to what the PRC used when Western, Japanese, and Korean players began entering the Chinese market - something which German policymakers even pointed out [2].
It's all about German car makers wanting to sell more cars. The recent Mercosur deal was also about it. Of course, no one will buy them anyway since they are too expensive and low quality and Chinese cars are more accessible anyway.
I get the same feeling. German car manufacturers had most of their growth in the past two or so decades from the Chinese market. But now they lost the EV race and CHinese customers prefer Chinese EVs to German ones(Porsche alone lost 99% operating profits!), so they are desperate to offload those cars to new markets any way they can, even at the expense of poor trade deals that might damage other sectors of the EU economy long term.
It's not a coincidence that EU suddenly signs trade deals left and right with the utmost urgency, see the recent Mercosur deal. The coffers are going dry and they need to bring in every euro they can no matter the future societal cost.
I'm happy to be proven wrong, but personally I'm skeptical these trade deals will lead to an increase in purchasing power and QoL for the average EU working class citizen in many countries, who've seen a stagnation or even decrease in the last decade or so.
The high tariffs on imported luxury cars never made much sense from the revenue point of view.
Our bureaucracy and governments has finally learnt how to do a Pareto analysis and learnt the difference between high volume/low margin vs low volume/high margins.
This will have no adverse affects on wages, there is definitely skill shortages in IT and nursing in the EU, anyone mentioning immigration is a racist xenophobe, there is no comparison to the UK nor Canada, do not talk about the huge amount of outsourcing to India already happening, your personal experiences are racism, is it cold in Russia?
Canada is embarking on a trade agreement with India and collectively our greatest fear is the immigration issue. Canada's immigration is already quite lop-sided.
> Canada's immigration is already quite lop-sided.
I don't even understand what "lop-sided" means here.
Would you say that Canada's oil and softwood businesses are lop-sided because we produce and export a lot of it? Or that the groceries' market is lop-sided because we don't produce a lot of it and therefore have to import?
Canada is an importer of people (not only from India) because it can't produce a lot of people. It is not different from groceries.
Do you appreciate that, in the wider historical context, this position is an exceptionally radical one? You seem to not understand how there could even exist a difference of opinion on this, but I'm confident that this outlook of humans as being completely fungible, transactional economic units would appear unthinkable to anyone throughout 99% of human history. Just the suggestion that a nation's population should be restocked by swapping it out with another nation's population would be tantamount to treason any time prior to the revolution of the 1960s.
Immigration is absolutely a part of this deal. Interestingly, EU official communications and western media barely mention this, but the Indian government's official communication tout a "new framework for mobility" that will "open up new opportunities in the European Union for Indian students, workers, and professionals." [1]
Canada as a whole has been pro immigration for a long time, but our immigration system was broken in recent years, and the most visible consequence of that has been an enormous increase in low skill, low wage Indian workers. A lot of people who have never had issues with immigration policy before have become very anti Indian immigration as a result.
Canadians don't seem to have their priorities straight if they are more concerned about having a few more Indian neighbors than the US threatening to invade.
Switzerland has a free trade deal with India already and has a huge trade surplus (~25B). Free trade with china too and also a big trade surplus of around $20B.
I always thought of Brussels as the city where decisions go to die; that the EU discusses everything, poses for pictures and solves nothing. Then, in less than a month we have the trade deal EU-Mercosur and this one with India.
Maybe the Europeans can actually solve problems, after all.
1.) These trade deals were discussed for 20 years.
2.) Politics always needs discussion of loosy "all people that matter"
3.) EU by definition has a broad definition of "everyone matters". That's why it is lame but that is why it is interesting for countries outside of the EU becoming a member.
4.) EU does get things done. Maybe you don't read the news (where do you live?)
It is funny that it took less time for South Americans to create the Mercosur and for the Pacific countries to create the trans-Pacific partnership than to negotiate any trade deals with the EU.
> Delhi and Brussels have also agreed on a mobility framework that eases restrictions for professionals to travel between India and the EU in the short term.
This is great news for professionals wishing to move to the EU, and I hope many will use this opportunity.
How are people mistaking what is clearly easier business visas to facilitate short term visits for migration? The EU can't commit to changes on migration because individual countries decide that.
Those words used in the quote are intentionally vague to not cause political backlash from Europeans who won't be happy to hear about getting even more immigration and competition for labor and housing.
Like if the framework would explicitly say "EU to allow in 20 million Indian workers every year" the political backlash would have been devastating, but since the framework only talks in vague phrases like "facilitate labour mobility" and "Enable mobility for skilled workers, young professionals" which are obvious migration policies but disguised in super vague terms to obfuscate the real intent.
That's why they're politicians, that's their job, they need to gaslight you on how policies that only benefit the business/asset owning class is gonna benefit you, the working class, even if that's not true. Their job is to get the voters to buy into and accept the policies their lobbyists push for.
I'm from Europe (a white male, if that matters to you). I have worked with several people from India (off the top of my head: Vimal, Hijas, Os). They were all competent, going above expectations. And not just that, they were very nice to be around. They did bring value and integrated well into our civilized society.
Way to fall-off from being the one source of news everyone in "Anglo" countries in the Third-World used to turn to (and love and respect... however biased the news may have been).
Edit: am trying to access from US, I see a paywall. Good to hear from comments that other countries don't see a paywall.
Huh, viewing from India here - no paywall. BBC can be biased, but it is very useful to know what the British state media thinks. This article is neutral reporting with barely any "analyst opinion" flavor.
Just for clarity: the BBC is not "state media," it's a public broadcaster. This is an important distinction as the UK Government cannot determine its agenda or directly influence its funding.
The BBC will regularly criticise the government, especially when it's a Labour government.
> US-based visitors to BBC.com will now have to pay $49.99 (£36) a year or $8.99 (£6.50) a month for access to most BBC News stories and features, and to stream the BBC News channel.
Only the US traffic has a paywall, there's none if you visit it from somewhere else. Understandable to charge people who don't pay for it with their taxes in my opinion, especially if you delivery videos and other expensive content for free without ads.
There are another two hundred-odd countries who also do not pay for it with their taxes. The BBC has apparently not seen fit to paywall them. This is a very confusing and inconsistent move.
My favorite part of this timeline is watching (union) leftists celebrate free trade and gun ownership.
The sad part is that as soon as someone wearing a blue shirt enters office, they will get right in line with whatever the blue shirt says. I saw this with Obama's drone strikes in Syria...
Moderates have always appreciated free trade, including Obama and Clinton, and to a lesser extent Biden. Heck, Republicans going anti-free trade is a relatively recent thing, it used to be moderates liked free trade, and so did the far right, now its just moderates liking on free trade and the far left and right not.
> I saw this with Obama's drone strikes in Syria...
Again, you are mistaking Obama for a far-left liberal when he was basically a moderate with no qualms on intervention. Now that we can compare Obama to a populist who claims to be but is not really a conservative either, I don't think we can claim much.
You know it's a good deal for the EU and India given that China has been attempting a diplomacy blitz against the deal [0] for [1] years [2] now [3].
Indian DefenseTech and Dual Use technologies vendors can also now participate in ReArm Europe/Readiness2030 [4] (the EU's Defense Modernization fund) as part of the India-EU Defense Pact [5] that was also signed, especially after the French Government identified [6] a Chinese-led disinformation operation against French and Indian DefenseTech which the DGSE reported on with AP [7].
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Edit: Notice how even on HN new accounts are suddenly popping up trying to make a wedge about this deal by dog whistling immigration even though mobility is not mentioned in the draft seen by Reuters and is a power that falls under individual state's sovereignity in the EU.
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Edit 2: Note the subsequent whataboutism that has arisen. A nation trying to conduct disinformation ops against another nation is an offensive action. It's the tip of the iceberg of attempts of foreign interference within France [8]
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Edit 3: Replying here
> I still don't know what 'diplomacy blitz' are you talking about.
The GT is the de facto voice of China's foreign policy, and has consistently viewed the EU-India deal as an attempt to isolate China. Additonally, Table Media (Germany's equivalent of Axios) noted He Lifeng's statements against the EU-India deal dueing Davos 2026, as the EU and India are investigating a compromise on CBAM for Indian exports.
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Edit 4: Unsurprisingly, the entire HN thread has been derailed by immigration.
Funny how he can confidently push misinformation like that with a straight face when even the sources he cited disprove what he's saying, and then having the audacity to accuse everyone else contradicting him as being a russian troll/bot.
As to your point [7], no need for China to "spread doubts about the performance of French-made Rafale ", I have at this very moment this book on my desk: Le Pouvoir sans visage: Le complexe militaro-industriel [1], written by a Pierre Marion [2], former head of the SDECE/DGSE in the early '80s, where said Pierre Marion does the same thing, i.e. he heavily criticises the Rafale programme and Dassault (the company and the man himself, Serge Dassault)
And a VC. VCs are famously known for supporting unions, railing against wage suppression, directly supporting higher wages, advocating protective policies etc. /s
> On mobility, the India-EU FTA provides a facilitative and predictable framework for business mobility covering short-term, temporary and business travel in both directions.
Do you predict short term business travel from India will increase youth unemployment in Europe? Why?
Don’t you think a larger export market for EU products like cars will increase employment in the EU? That would be my prediction.
Does it say that about short term business travel only?
"offers an excellent opportunity for us to cooperate on facilitating labour mobility"
"This cooperation framework will facilitate the mobility of skilled workers, young professionals and seasonal works in shortage sectors"
"The Office will help Indian workers, students, and researchers find out about opportunities in Europe, starting with the ICT sector with the aim of expanding it further in the future."
Beyond that press release apparently it commits member states to EU commits to uncapping student visas for Indian students
The agreement also includes "mobility". The EU has plenty of STEM talent. And since many industries are downsizing due to energy and other issues, there's no point to bring more from India, of all places.
Immigration is not part of the EU-India Trade Deal [0] nor the EU-India Defense Pact [1].
The only mention of mobility (not even immigration) is a vaguely worded MoU with no commitment of execution [2].
Instead, Europeans should be thankful that India has now reduced tariffs on European engineering and chemical goods to below what Chinese transshippers paid via the India-ASEAN FTA thus giving European manufacturers a much needed export market defended against Chinese overproduction, and that India will now join South Korea and Japan in arming Ukraine and the entire EU as part of ReArm Europe/Readiness2030 [3]. Heck, India has already begun defending Greece [4] and Cyprus [5] against Turkish aggression in the Aegean and investing in European infrastructure development [6].
The only people who would be opposed to the EU-India Trade and Defense Deals are those who want the EU to remain a perpetual junior partner to the US or China. In fact, China has a history of leveraging disinformation [7] to undermine EU-India relations.
Given the pattern of accounts on this thread and how it was derailed by the boogeyman of immigration, there are hallmarks of a spamoflauge operation similar to what the EU-Mercosur deal faced.
Also, individual EU states have always had the final say on immigration policy within their borders.
> Delhi and Brussels have also agreed on a mobility framework that eases restrictions for professionals to travel between India and the EU in the short term.
That should hopefully help increasing the much needed immigration.
The much needed immigration should rather come from countries with similar society and culture to us Europeans, rather than India. Europe couldn't be more different to India and should remain as it was pre-~2014.
Culturally more similar would be South-America I'd say. Them I wouldn't mind at all.
>The much needed immigration should rather come from countries with similar society and culture to us Europeans, rather than India.
The mass emigration from India is a direct consequence of India's poor wages and living standards. If that was not the case, most people I know (and I myself) wouldn't have emigrated. From what I see[1], the average South American is much better off than the average Indian. Maybe that (and India's huge population) explains why South Americans do not emigrate as much[2] as Indians?
In other words, people from "countries with similar society and culture to us Europeans" may not want to move to Europe. It's all supply and demand at the end of the day
The mobility discussion is interesting to me as someone who navigated US immigration.
Moving countries is hard. Not just paperwork hard, but restarting-your-life hard. Credit history, professional networks, understanding how things actually work versus how they officially work.
If the mobility framework makes it meaningfully easier for skilled workers to move between India and Europe, that's significant. Not because of labor economics, but because talented people having more options is generally good for everyone.
The H1B system in the US has created a lot of anxiety and frustration. Competition for that talent pool seems healthy.
The rub here is "skilled workers". Just after Brexit, the Boris Johnson Tory government adjusted immigration rules for "skilled" workers, and caused a civilisation-altering number of people (now known as the "Boriswave") to immigrate to the country, mostly from India, Africa, and other less developed areas. It's now known that almost every pay level and skill (or lack thereof) of job was eligible under the new rules, with some countries of origin, like Zimbabwe, having up to 10 dependents per worker on average IIRC. The same story has played out in the US with the "skilled" H1B visa scheme. People have lost all trust in governments to architect immigration laws in the interest of the natives, rather than giving big business carte blanche to import their own replacement workforce who will do any available job for the national minimum wage.
"Skilled" sounds nice because it sounds like "doctors, educated" but the only real SAFE way to ensure it's actually skilled is make the dollar amounts so high that no company will want to use it to import cheap near-slave labor.
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> like Zimbabwe, having up to 10 dependents per worker on average IIRC
Some developed countries have terrible demographics and need fresh kids.
I am expecting that sometime soon New Zealand will start accepting unskilled immigrants if they have >2 healthy kids under 10 years old. It wouldn't surprise me if the dept of internal affairs already has a soft rule to encourage that.
At some point many countries with shitty demographics are going to have to start competing to import kids.
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> talented people having more options is generally good for everyone
While I support free markets, that argument sounds a bit like the basis of the old 'trickle-down economics' and similar theories such as global free trade: Help the wealthy and the benefits will 'trickle down' to everyone else.
It turns out that if you help the wealthy, then the wealthy benefit. I know that doesn't sound like a surprising result when it's said that way, but the point is that the rest is a convenient fiction the wealthy tell themselves and politicians tell the public, in order to serve themselves.
In the US for example, those policies have led to historic increases in wealth for the few, and stagnated wages for the many. On the other hand, in less well off economies such as China and Brazil, the policies led to historic numbers lifted out of poverty - far more than anything in history. So that's a great result that we absolutely should not ignore or put a stop to. I support free trade.
But if the policy isn't specifically designed to benefit workers in the US, for example, if they are left to get theoretical second or third order theoretical benefits, it won't work for them. It's not 'generally good for everyone' unless it's made that way.
I don't understand what your point is when comparing how similar policies helped general population prosperity in less-well-off countries to the USA you say only benefiting the wealthy.
What should I be getting out of your argument? Asking in good faith.
For example, that there's more to it than that simple rule, or that once a certain level of general population prosperity is reached it stops working, or that impoverished populations have a culture that better benefits from such policies... ?
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The US is no longer in competition for that talent pool by its own deliberate actions.
Might we see a European flowering as the US chokes itself into a regional power?
That isn't at all what I'm seeing. I still have people from Europe asking me to sponsor their H1B.
That’s not true. Trump will be gone in a few years. Soft power and destabilizing many countries has done wonders for US hegemony.
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Sure, if they want to pay decent salaries.
But no, you can make 3-4x in the US. That’s not an exaggeration. And before someone says ‘free healthcare’, big-tech employers in the US provide pretty nice insurance for employees that caps maximum out of pocket expenses to about a week of your salary.
EU (except Zurich and London) tech salaries have sort of stagnated to a point that you make about the same in Bangalore, and spend significantly more.
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Does anyone have a detailed explainer on the mobility changes, or is it just not finalized yet?
It's an MoU to "discuss" mobility with no commitment to actually decide anything: "[a]dopted as a memorandum of understanding in parallel with the finalisation of the FTA, offers an excellent opportunity for us to cooperate on facilitating labour mobility, supporting skills development and capacity building, and working on skills and qualification frameworks" [0].
Immigration remains under the purview of individual EU member states. And immigration/mobility is out of scope of the actual EU-India FTA deal and the EU-India Defense Pact deal.
Notice how this entire thread got derailed by low karma and newish accounts dogwhistling immigration instead of discussing how the deal expanded European (and India) industrial and chemical exports to India (and Europe) by giving them a tariff rate under that which is Chinese transshipped products via ASEAN get thus making European (and Indian) capital goods cost effective and now includes India as part of ReArm Europe [1] - the EU's defense fund for European and Ukrainian rearmament [2].
Who needs Russian backed farmer disinfo networks [3] when you have anonymous "software engineer" and "OSINT" accounts stirring $hit to try and undermine the EU-India relationship [4]. That said, the deal will go through because the right businesses and unions were mollified over the past 2-3 years building up to this.
[0] - https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_...
[1] - https://theprint.in/diplomacy/india-eu-sign-security-defence...
[2] - https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2025/7695...
[3] - https://councilonstrategicrisks.org/2025/12/01/putin-permafr...
[4] - https://www.defense.gouv.fr/desinformation/nos-analyses-froi...
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This is excellent, the duopoly discussions of the world mostly center around US and China and EU feels increasingly excluded while the rest of the world appears as footnote for good or bad reasons. I do hope this means there is enough dynamism in global trade.
The current challenge is that China has so much industrial overcapacity that it possibly can sell goods at near , sometimes even below mfg costs which makes it difficult if not impossible for India or other country made goods to even think of competing in the middle part of the value chain. Yet, it is the only hope for India to climb at least slightly even if they can never hope to get to the frontier of mfg. Chinese goals now are to amortize their existing mfg investments in any way possible but they still find it difficult to spur domestic consumption
Europe and the EU, Japan are vassal states curently occupied by the US. China, Russia, India are largely independent states. I am sure once Europe is not occupied, it will be talked about more.
Russia has become a vassal state of China.
I’m surprised, so it seems like most tariffs are falling towards zero on all products except agriculture and cars below 17,000$ in the coming few years.
Especially cars, India has had insane tariffs on luxury cars and motorcycles that will disappear, which is interesting. On the face this seems like a good deal for India as India can probably export much more than EU can to India except for a few sectors like Automobiles and Chips, but who knows, I assume EU officials seem to think the gains in a few high tech sectors are enough to offset the cheap goods on all other sectors.
The cheap goods are already coming from China, so having more of it from India doesn't hurt them at all.
All automotive goods in India below the $17,800 pricepoint are essentially "Made in India", not China, and in a lot of cases exported abroad under Renault, Suzuki, Toyota, Hyundai, and Mitsubishi badges or directly sold by Mahindra (especially South America and South Africa) or Tata.
Chinese manufacturers got hounded out and as a result the PRC tried [0] and failed [1] to weaponize the WTO against India [0] for India trying to subsidize GreenTech driven industrialization.
Chinese manufacturers are allowed to enter India, but on terms similar to what the PRC used when Western, Japanese, and Korean players began entering the Chinese market - something which German policymakers even pointed out [2].
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-files-wto-case-aga...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/china/india-stops-chinas-reque...
[2] - https://table.media/china/thema-des-tages/indien-weshalb-chi...
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It's all about German car makers wanting to sell more cars. The recent Mercosur deal was also about it. Of course, no one will buy them anyway since they are too expensive and low quality and Chinese cars are more accessible anyway.
I get the same feeling. German car manufacturers had most of their growth in the past two or so decades from the Chinese market. But now they lost the EV race and CHinese customers prefer Chinese EVs to German ones(Porsche alone lost 99% operating profits!), so they are desperate to offload those cars to new markets any way they can, even at the expense of poor trade deals that might damage other sectors of the EU economy long term.
It's not a coincidence that EU suddenly signs trade deals left and right with the utmost urgency, see the recent Mercosur deal. The coffers are going dry and they need to bring in every euro they can no matter the future societal cost.
I'm happy to be proven wrong, but personally I'm skeptical these trade deals will lead to an increase in purchasing power and QoL for the average EU working class citizen in many countries, who've seen a stagnation or even decrease in the last decade or so.
The high tariffs on imported luxury cars never made much sense from the revenue point of view.
Our bureaucracy and governments has finally learnt how to do a Pareto analysis and learnt the difference between high volume/low margin vs low volume/high margins.
> cheap goods
In a cost of living crisis, maybe this is seen as a helpful import?
This will have no adverse affects on wages, there is definitely skill shortages in IT and nursing in the EU, anyone mentioning immigration is a racist xenophobe, there is no comparison to the UK nor Canada, do not talk about the huge amount of outsourcing to India already happening, your personal experiences are racism, is it cold in Russia?
Did I miss anything?
Edit: can't parse sarcasm.
They're missing an /s.
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Canada is embarking on a trade agreement with India and collectively our greatest fear is the immigration issue. Canada's immigration is already quite lop-sided.
> Canada's immigration is already quite lop-sided.
I don't even understand what "lop-sided" means here.
Would you say that Canada's oil and softwood businesses are lop-sided because we produce and export a lot of it? Or that the groceries' market is lop-sided because we don't produce a lot of it and therefore have to import?
Canada is an importer of people (not only from India) because it can't produce a lot of people. It is not different from groceries.
Why not import from a variety of countries to preserve the social fabric? https://preview.redd.it/in-the-first-three-months-of-2025-ca...
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>I don't even understand [...]
>It is not different from groceries.
Do you appreciate that, in the wider historical context, this position is an exceptionally radical one? You seem to not understand how there could even exist a difference of opinion on this, but I'm confident that this outlook of humans as being completely fungible, transactional economic units would appear unthinkable to anyone throughout 99% of human history. Just the suggestion that a nation's population should be restocked by swapping it out with another nation's population would be tantamount to treason any time prior to the revolution of the 1960s.
>because it can't produce a lot of people.
So does every country that can't grow it's population indefinitely need to import a ton of people? What is the endgame there?
And I thought trade in people as some kind of fungible economic token was out of vogue.
Is it typical to consider immigration as a trade similar to apples and oranges?
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Trade != Immigration
Immigration is absolutely a part of this deal. Interestingly, EU official communications and western media barely mention this, but the Indian government's official communication tout a "new framework for mobility" that will "open up new opportunities in the European Union for Indian students, workers, and professionals." [1]
[1] https://www.mea.gov.in/Speeches-Statements.htm?dtl%2F40615%2...
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Right but if you want a favorable trade deal then you gotta throw in some immigration sweeteners.
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> collectively our greatest fear
Citation very much needed. This sounds like _your_ concern that you're trying to launder through projecting onto the rest of the country.
Canada as a whole has been pro immigration for a long time, but our immigration system was broken in recent years, and the most visible consequence of that has been an enormous increase in low skill, low wage Indian workers. A lot of people who have never had issues with immigration policy before have become very anti Indian immigration as a result.
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Here ya go bud: https://abacusdata.ca/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Slide6-1.pn...
It is one of the top 5 issues for ALL Canadians.
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Canadians don't seem to have their priorities straight if they are more concerned about having a few more Indian neighbors than the US threatening to invade.
What's a "few more" to you?
Look at this chart for example: https://preview.redd.it/in-the-first-three-months-of-2025-ca...
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Do you feel like your govt represents you?
The current Carney govt? Maybe. Too soon to tell, but things are heading in the right direction.
The previous Trudeau govt? Absolutely not. He was the prime minister of everyone except Canadians.
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Switzerland has a free trade deal with India already and has a huge trade surplus (~25B). Free trade with china too and also a big trade surplus of around $20B.
I might be wrong, but isn't it due to them being a finance hub and/or Veblen goods?
These are a bit of a legacy thing that countries can't just develop.
CH to india key sectors include pharmaceutical products, electrical/electronic equipment, and organic chemicals.
India to CH, gold, jewelry, equipment, textiles.
I am pleasantly surprised.
I always thought of Brussels as the city where decisions go to die; that the EU discusses everything, poses for pictures and solves nothing. Then, in less than a month we have the trade deal EU-Mercosur and this one with India.
Maybe the Europeans can actually solve problems, after all.
1.) These trade deals were discussed for 20 years. 2.) Politics always needs discussion of loosy "all people that matter" 3.) EU by definition has a broad definition of "everyone matters". That's why it is lame but that is why it is interesting for countries outside of the EU becoming a member.
4.) EU does get things done. Maybe you don't read the news (where do you live?)
Well, I take 1-3 as evidence for my point.
It is funny that it took less time for South Americans to create the Mercosur and for the Pacific countries to create the trans-Pacific partnership than to negotiate any trade deals with the EU.
> where do you live?
Latin American living in Canada.
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Wait EU-Meecosur is currently on ice, because France is against it and they brought it up to the highest EU court to decide.
I expect something similar with the India Deal, there is always some form of Veto in the EU that makes it very hard to act as a unit.
> Delhi and Brussels have also agreed on a mobility framework that eases restrictions for professionals to travel between India and the EU in the short term.
This is great news for professionals wishing to move to the EU, and I hope many will use this opportunity.
How are people mistaking what is clearly easier business visas to facilitate short term visits for migration? The EU can't commit to changes on migration because individual countries decide that.
>The EU can't commit to changes on migration because individual countries decide that.
Does it not commit the member states to for example uncap student visas which are a common route for migration?
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The quote uses the words mobility and travel and short term. It doesn’t mention residency or work permit. Am I missing something?
Those words used in the quote are intentionally vague to not cause political backlash from Europeans who won't be happy to hear about getting even more immigration and competition for labor and housing.
Like if the framework would explicitly say "EU to allow in 20 million Indian workers every year" the political backlash would have been devastating, but since the framework only talks in vague phrases like "facilitate labour mobility" and "Enable mobility for skilled workers, young professionals" which are obvious migration policies but disguised in super vague terms to obfuscate the real intent.
That's why they're politicians, that's their job, they need to gaslight you on how policies that only benefit the business/asset owning class is gonna benefit you, the working class, even if that's not true. Their job is to get the voters to buy into and accept the policies their lobbyists push for.
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I'm from Europe (a white male, if that matters to you). I have worked with several people from India (off the top of my head: Vimal, Hijas, Os). They were all competent, going above expectations. And not just that, they were very nice to be around. They did bring value and integrated well into our civilized society.
More indian IT imports that get to enjoy Europe...
I wonder if UK will also get a deal soon.
UK-India: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%E2%80%93United_Kingdom_C...
UK-EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EU%E2%80%93UK_Trade_and_Cooper...
EU will scuttle the trade deal to protect the niche interests of French onion farmers. See Mercosur.
It's insane to me that BBC now has a paywall.
Way to fall-off from being the one source of news everyone in "Anglo" countries in the Third-World used to turn to (and love and respect... however biased the news may have been).
Edit: am trying to access from US, I see a paywall. Good to hear from comments that other countries don't see a paywall.
Huh, viewing from India here - no paywall. BBC can be biased, but it is very useful to know what the British state media thinks. This article is neutral reporting with barely any "analyst opinion" flavor.
Just for clarity: the BBC is not "state media," it's a public broadcaster. This is an important distinction as the UK Government cannot determine its agenda or directly influence its funding.
The BBC will regularly criticise the government, especially when it's a Labour government.
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> US-based visitors to BBC.com will now have to pay $49.99 (£36) a year or $8.99 (£6.50) a month for access to most BBC News stories and features, and to stream the BBC News channel.
Only the US traffic has a paywall, there's none if you visit it from somewhere else. Understandable to charge people who don't pay for it with their taxes in my opinion, especially if you delivery videos and other expensive content for free without ads.
It should be funded as part of spreading the British viewpoint, promoting British values, culture and so on — i.e. maintaining "soft power".
I would have expected Britain to realize this and continue funding it.
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There are another two hundred-odd countries who also do not pay for it with their taxes. The BBC has apparently not seen fit to paywall them. This is a very confusing and inconsistent move.
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I don't see the paywall. EU-bound.
This will strengthen relationship and stabilize the economy a lot in the face of Trumps tariff shenanigans.
My favorite part of this timeline is watching (union) leftists celebrate free trade and gun ownership.
The sad part is that as soon as someone wearing a blue shirt enters office, they will get right in line with whatever the blue shirt says. I saw this with Obama's drone strikes in Syria...
Moderates have always appreciated free trade, including Obama and Clinton, and to a lesser extent Biden. Heck, Republicans going anti-free trade is a relatively recent thing, it used to be moderates liked free trade, and so did the far right, now its just moderates liking on free trade and the far left and right not.
> I saw this with Obama's drone strikes in Syria...
Again, you are mistaking Obama for a far-left liberal when he was basically a moderate with no qualms on intervention. Now that we can compare Obama to a populist who claims to be but is not really a conservative either, I don't think we can claim much.
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This is fantastic, just another step of trade moving away from being US-centric.
Everyone is just going to move on and ignore the silly tariffs.
This sounds like a terrible deal, especially if it involves a flood of immigration from India
Honestly I think this is amazing news.
Reuters has the draft terms - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/details-eu-india-trade-d.... Mobility is not mentioned.
You know it's a good deal for the EU and India given that China has been attempting a diplomacy blitz against the deal [0] for [1] years [2] now [3].
Indian DefenseTech and Dual Use technologies vendors can also now participate in ReArm Europe/Readiness2030 [4] (the EU's Defense Modernization fund) as part of the India-EU Defense Pact [5] that was also signed, especially after the French Government identified [6] a Chinese-led disinformation operation against French and Indian DefenseTech which the DGSE reported on with AP [7].
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Edit: Notice how even on HN new accounts are suddenly popping up trying to make a wedge about this deal by dog whistling immigration even though mobility is not mentioned in the draft seen by Reuters and is a power that falls under individual state's sovereignity in the EU.
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Edit 2: Note the subsequent whataboutism that has arisen. A nation trying to conduct disinformation ops against another nation is an offensive action. It's the tip of the iceberg of attempts of foreign interference within France [8]
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Edit 3: Replying here
> I still don't know what 'diplomacy blitz' are you talking about.
The GT is the de facto voice of China's foreign policy, and has consistently viewed the EU-India deal as an attempt to isolate China. Additonally, Table Media (Germany's equivalent of Axios) noted He Lifeng's statements against the EU-India deal dueing Davos 2026, as the EU and India are investigating a compromise on CBAM for Indian exports.
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Edit 4: Unsurprisingly, the entire HN thread has been derailed by immigration.
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[0] - https://table.media/china/thema-des-tages/indien-weshalb-chi...
[1] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1222983.shtml
[2] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202105/1222993.shtml
[3] - https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202010/1205230.shtml
[4] - https://theprint.in/diplomacy/india-eu-sign-security-defence...
[5] - https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/security-and-defence-eu-and-...
[6] - https://www.defense.gouv.fr/desinformation/nos-analyses-froi...
[7] - https://apnews.com/article/france-china-pakistan-india-defen...
[8] - https://www.lemonde.fr/societe/article/2024/07/02/deux-espio...
>Mobility is not mentioned.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_...
Funny how he can confidently push misinformation like that with a straight face when even the sources he cited disprove what he's saying, and then having the audacity to accuse everyone else contradicting him as being a russian troll/bot.
As to your point [7], no need for China to "spread doubts about the performance of French-made Rafale ", I have at this very moment this book on my desk: Le Pouvoir sans visage: Le complexe militaro-industriel [1], written by a Pierre Marion [2], former head of the SDECE/DGSE in the early '80s, where said Pierre Marion does the same thing, i.e. he heavily criticises the Rafale programme and Dassault (the company and the man himself, Serge Dassault)
[1] https://www.amazon.fr/Pouvoir-sans-visage-complexe-militaro-...)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Marion
For people who don't know who alephnerd is, check their past comments on geopolitics. They're one of the more well informed commenters on HN.
And a VC. VCs are famously known for supporting unions, railing against wage suppression, directly supporting higher wages, advocating protective policies etc. /s
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I read the three articles that you mention [0][1] and [2] and I still don't know what 'diplomacy blitz' are you talking about.
To your edit, its one newish account quoting the article and being pro immigration. Its a completely fine comment. You should calm down.
> its one newish account quoting the article and being pro immigration
The comment is so absurdly out of step that it's clearly just trying to stir the issue.
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Press release says
> On mobility, the India-EU FTA provides a facilitative and predictable framework for business mobility covering short-term, temporary and business travel in both directions.
Do you predict short term business travel from India will increase youth unemployment in Europe? Why?
Don’t you think a larger export market for EU products like cars will increase employment in the EU? That would be my prediction.
Does it say that about short term business travel only?
"offers an excellent opportunity for us to cooperate on facilitating labour mobility" "This cooperation framework will facilitate the mobility of skilled workers, young professionals and seasonal works in shortage sectors" "The Office will help Indian workers, students, and researchers find out about opportunities in Europe, starting with the ICT sector with the aim of expanding it further in the future."
Beyond that press release apparently it commits member states to EU commits to uncapping student visas for Indian students
Did you even read the trade deal?
I mean, if your problem is unemployment, leaning how to read would go a long way.
The agreement also includes "mobility". The EU has plenty of STEM talent. And since many industries are downsizing due to energy and other issues, there's no point to bring more from India, of all places.
[0] "India, EU seal landmark mobility pact; Indian professionals, students set to benefit" 27 Jan 2026 https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/nri/study/india-eu-seal...
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Immigration is not part of the EU-India Trade Deal [0] nor the EU-India Defense Pact [1].
The only mention of mobility (not even immigration) is a vaguely worded MoU with no commitment of execution [2].
Instead, Europeans should be thankful that India has now reduced tariffs on European engineering and chemical goods to below what Chinese transshippers paid via the India-ASEAN FTA thus giving European manufacturers a much needed export market defended against Chinese overproduction, and that India will now join South Korea and Japan in arming Ukraine and the entire EU as part of ReArm Europe/Readiness2030 [3]. Heck, India has already begun defending Greece [4] and Cyprus [5] against Turkish aggression in the Aegean and investing in European infrastructure development [6].
The only people who would be opposed to the EU-India Trade and Defense Deals are those who want the EU to remain a perpetual junior partner to the US or China. In fact, China has a history of leveraging disinformation [7] to undermine EU-India relations.
Given the pattern of accounts on this thread and how it was derailed by the boogeyman of immigration, there are hallmarks of a spamoflauge operation similar to what the EU-Mercosur deal faced.
Also, individual EU states have always had the final say on immigration policy within their borders.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/details-eu-india-trade-d...
[1] - https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/security-and-defence-eu-and-...
[2] - https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/ip_26_...
[3] - https://theprint.in/diplomacy/india-eu-sign-security-defence...
[4] - https://geetha.mil.gr/kyklos-synomilion-staff-talks-kai-ypog...
[5] - https://www.gov.cy/proedros-proedria/koini-diakiryxi-gia-tin...
[6] - https://www.lagazzettamarittima.it/2025/10/30/rixi-in-india-...
[7] - https://www.defense.gouv.fr/desinformation/nos-analyses-froi...
> Delhi and Brussels have also agreed on a mobility framework that eases restrictions for professionals to travel between India and the EU in the short term.
That should hopefully help increasing the much needed immigration.
The much needed immigration should rather come from countries with similar society and culture to us Europeans, rather than India. Europe couldn't be more different to India and should remain as it was pre-~2014.
Culturally more similar would be South-America I'd say. Them I wouldn't mind at all.
>The much needed immigration should rather come from countries with similar society and culture to us Europeans, rather than India.
The mass emigration from India is a direct consequence of India's poor wages and living standards. If that was not the case, most people I know (and I myself) wouldn't have emigrated. From what I see[1], the average South American is much better off than the average Indian. Maybe that (and India's huge population) explains why South Americans do not emigrate as much[2] as Indians?
In other words, people from "countries with similar society and culture to us Europeans" may not want to move to Europe. It's all supply and demand at the end of the day
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra...
I hope for our (India's) sake, it doesn't. We need to keep as much talent here as we can.
It's cheapest for the employer to keep it in India itself.
EU would be stupid to miss the opportunity after US crackdown on H1B.
GOOD LUCK
Notice how new accounts are suddenly popping up trying to make a wedge about this deal by using immigration as a wedge issue.
Edit: The BBC article is wrong, as can be seen by the draft reported by Reuters [0]
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/details-eu-india-trade-d...
It's in the BBC's article.
Wedge issue? EU youth unemployment is 15%.
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What is the BBC article wrong about?
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