In a move straight out of Camp of the Saints, the benighted leaders of the European Union have signed a massive Free Trade Agreement with the government of India. While the deal with virtually eliminate all tariffs between the EU and India, saving European businesses around 4 billion euros in tariff costs per year and doubling the volume of EU goods exported to India by 2032, it will also open Western Europe up to a massive influx of Indian “students, researchers, seasonal and highly skilled workers.”
The most recent estimate of Indian nationals already in Europe is 2024’s estimate of 931,607. That is comparatively small compared with the number in the United States, estimated at about 5.4 million. However, if this move by India represents, as some believe, a pullback from India’s concentration on exporting its workers to the US, estimates of around an additional 250,000 Indian newcomers to Europe per year are reasonable.
To expedite the movement of Indian labor to Europe, the EU has proudly announced it is opening the “first EU Legal Gateway Office in India.”
The whole deal, despite the gushes from the likes of EU chief Ursula von der Leyen, amounts to a surrender on the part of Europe. Under the heading “Europe Just Signed Its Own Death Warrant,” commentator Laura Aboli posted the following on X.
The EU has just announced a so called “historic” free trade agreement with India, proudly described as the mother of all agreements, covering 25% of global GDP and one third of world trade.
What they won’t tell you is that this deal isn’t growth, it’s total surrender.
Europe is entering a free trade agreement from a position of extreme weakness, after deliberately dismantling its own industrial base through energy self sabotage, climate dogma, over regulation, sanctions, and the systematic offshoring of production. You don’t liberalise trade when you’re strong, you do it when you can no longer compete and need cheap imports to mask decline. India brings young labour, low costs, state protection of industry, and rapidly scaling manufacturing. Europe brings high energy prices, ageing workers, collapsing SMEs, and regulatory burdens so heavy that producing anything locally has become an act of heroism.
This agreement doesn’t make Europe more competitive, it makes Europe irrelevant as a producer.
Manufacturing will move east, value creation will move east, jobs skills, and industrial know how will move east. Europe will be left consuming what it no longer makes, governed by rules it no longer enforces on anyone but itself, while politicians celebrate GDP figures that mean nothing to the people watching their towns hollow out.
Free trade between unequal partners does not create balance, it accelerates collapse.
Europe is done.
For more, see Breitbart News.