“Mother of All Deals Will Touch 2 Billion Lives”: Austrian Envoy Hails EU-India FTA

In a wide-ranging and candid conversation with NDTV’s Aditya Raj Kaul, Austria’s Ambassador to India, Robert Zischg, described the newly announced EU–India Free Trade Agreement political declaration as the “mother of all deals”, one that, he said, will “affect close to two billion people” and fundamentally reshape business, mobility, and strategic alignment between Europe and India. Calling the agreement “18 years in the making,” Zischg underlined that while the political announcement has generated excitement, the road to implementation will be complex and painstaking. “This is a very complicated agreement,” he noted, pointing to the extensive legal scrubbing ahead. “Every word is important because once implemented, it becomes law applicable across 27 countries.” The announcement followed the visit to India by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, along with senior EU leaders, and signals what the envoy described as a decisive pivot in Europe’s trade and strategic thinking amid global turbulence, tariff wars, and supply-chain disruptions.