India-EU Free Trade Negotiations and the Role of Veto Players

Abstract

Foreign Policy decision-making on a political level is a difficult and intricate task that requires coordination, cooperation and agreement between multiple actors involved in the policy making process. This challenge is vividly demonstrated by the ongoing negotiations between the European Union (EU) and India regarding the Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Despite the shared eagerness of EU and Indian decision-makers to reach an FTA agreement that would benefit both the signatories (Wouters et.al, 2014), the negotiation has so far failed to reach a conclusion. In fact, the FTA talks have been ongoing for nearly a decade, underscoring the complexities inherent in the making of foreign policy decisions and the necessity of reaching a consensus among different levels of actors and decision-makers. Therefore, this research proposes to conduct a study on the Indian foreign policy decision-making, by utilizing Veto Player Theory to analyze the underlying complexities that significantly influenced the decisions made by the Indian decision-makers at two critical stages: the start and the halt of the FTA during the negotiation talks with the EU.