On 15 April 2026, IFAIR and The EU-India Watch co-hosted a panel discussion at the Hertie School in Berlin, utilising the new multilateral framework of the new trade deal. The event picked up a question that has been gaining traction in Brussels and New Delhi alike: how can the EU and India bring their industrial and climate finance strategies closer together as both regions push their decarbonisation agendas. The EU is committed to climate neutrality by 2050, while India targets net zero by 2070 with an interim goal of 500 GW of non-fossil electricity capacity by 2030. The financial and regulatory tools the two sides are using look quite different in design, and the panel set out to map where they collide and where they could actually complement each other.
From the start, the conversation skipped past the usual high-level rhetoric and went straight into the mechanics: regulatory bottlenecks, gaps in development finance, and the joint-venture opportunities slowly taking shape along the EU-India corridor. Two policy logics framed most of the exchange. On the European side, the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), which prices carbon at the bloc’s external borders. On the Indian side, the Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes, which channel public support into domestic green manufacturing, in particular in areas like green hydrogen and solar.
“The CBAM is a measure applied to everyone with the same degree, to European companies through the ETS, and to the rest of the world through the border mechanism. That consistency is what makes it a climate instrument.”
— Paul Loeper
A recurring question throughout the panel was whether CBAM is a protectionist wall or a genuine climate instrument. Paul Loeper made a clear case for the latter. His point was that CBAM applies the same logic to European companies via the ETS as it does to imports via the border mechanism, and that this consistency is precisely what qualifies it as a climate measure rather than a trade barrier. He also brought in the corporate angle and pointed out that finance teams across European industry are tracking these mechanisms closely and on a daily basis. For him, the natural next step would be to see CBAM properly implemented in the European Green Deal, and looking further ahead, the most interesting development would be an EU-India Green Deal as a longer-term framework for the cooperation between both sides.
“This is an arranged marriage [referring to the FTA between India and Europe]. It took 20 years to negotiate. And like most arranged marriages, timing is important, and the ecosystem around it is what makes it work.” — Sangeeth Selvaraju
Sangeeth Selvaraju framed the same relationship through a different metaphor, one that landed well in the room. He described the long-negotiated EU-India Free Trade Agreement as an arranged marriage: 20 years of negotiations, now finally moving towards a conclusion, but only ever successful if the wider ecosystem of researchers, businesses, academics, and political actors actively supports it. His concern was that the political signal has now been given, but the underlying mutual understanding still has a long way to go. Europe’s reading of India, he argued, lags significantly behind its evolving understanding of China, and the same gap is visible in how India reads Brussels, Berlin, and Paris. Selvaraju also pointed to a quieter shift in the German climate startup landscape, where companies have increasingly moved away from framing their work around “fighting climate change” and now talk about “building resilience” instead. The change in vocabulary, in his reading, reflects how green industrial policy is being repositioned politically.
Both speakers came back to a similar idea, just from different directions: what is most needed now is real capacity building on each side, and a translation of complex industrial and financial policy into language that actually means something to people outside the immediate policy bubble. The Q&A picked up serious engagement from both the room and the online audience, with questions touching on the practical implementation of CBAM for Indian exporters, the role of development finance institutions in bridging the two markets, and how academia and civil society can feed into the ongoing policy dialogue. The networking session with drinks, canapés & a small buffet afterwards gave space for informal follow-up between the speakers, the IFAIR delegation, and the wider audience, and several of those conversations carried on well past the official end of the event.
Takeaway
The panel left little doubt that the EU-India green corridor is no longer only a climate file, but a substantial piece of industrial restructuring with serious strategic implications for both sides. With nearly 70 participants in total and the joint hosting effort by IFAIR and The EU-India Watch, the event set up a solid base on aligning the financial and industrial side of the green transition, according to present stakeholders stated during the following networking session.
Panellists
• Paul Loeper, Senior Consultant at Capgemini Invent and lead candidate for Volt Deutschland in Berlin
• Sangeeth Selvaraju, Policy Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change & the Environment, LSE
