India and the European Union have fixed October 9 in New Delhi for the summit intended to conclude their free-trade agreement, and the negotiation's endgame acquired its first hard outline this week: a draft automotive tariff schedule, circulating among member-state delegations and reported by Brussels trade press, that shows the landing zone both sides have converged toward.
The leaked schedule's architecture: Indian passenger-vehicle tariffs step down from 100-plus percent to 30 percent over eight years for EU-origin cars within a quota, electric vehicles get a faster five-year glide to 20 percent, and the quota expands with Indian EV exports to Europe — the reciprocity clause Indian negotiators built to convert a concession into an industrial-policy instrument. Wines and spirits follow a parallel staircase.
The carbon question, the file's last ideological trench, has found its procedural bridge: a climate-partnership annexe under which the EU's border adjustment mechanism applies to Indian steel and aluminium with a transition rebate tied to India's carbon-market prices converging on a negotiated trajectory. Neither side's lawyers love it; both sides' politicians can announce it.
The services and mobility chapter — initialled in July with its 80,000-movement quota architecture — remains the agreement's Indian headline, and the October date now disciplines the residual files: public procurement thresholds, the dairy exclusion both sides treat as untouchable, and dispute-settlement design.
Sixteen years of negotiation have taught both capitals the same superstition: nothing is agreed until everything is. But a summit with a date, a schedule with numbers, and two leaderships that need a geopolitical win in the same quarter is the closest this agreement has come to existing. The default, for the first time since 2007, is signature.