European Free Trade Association

Earlier this week, Swiss President Guy Parmelin was in India for a three-day visit, during which he held bilateral talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and met President Droupadi Murmu.

The visit came as India and the four-member European Free Trade Association marked one year of their trade and economic partnership agreement, which includes Switzerland.

Welcoming the president of a country known for its cheese, Modi gifted Parmelin three special Indian cheese varieties, which were meant to showcase India's growing tradition of cheesemaking and regional craftsmanship.

Now to learn about the key takeaways from this visit and what the two sides discussed, we are joined by The Indian Express's diplomatic affairs editor, Subhijeet Roy.

Who is likely to benefit from this provision, and what changes for them?

So students, businessmen, professionals who want to work there or who travel for work there, all these categories of, you know, applicants, of Indian nationals, it will be extremely beneficial for this category, this community of people who would like to explore Switzerland and Europe.

And Switzerland had also played an important role in the trade agreement that was signed between India and the European Free Trade Association.

Can you tell us a bit about that, and how would the agreement benefit the two countries?

The wider trend was already improving before September's figures were out, though, across the European Union, Britain, and the EFTA.

That's the European Free Trade Association.

Tesla registrations were already up on the first eight months of the year by 43%.

The wider BEV market up 38% over the same period, so Tesla is growing faster than the EV market.

Does Canada have enough immigrants yet? Let's see.

Switzerland, non-EEA member of European Free Trade Association governed by a patchwork of bilateral sectoral agreements.

Let's see.

Funding for EU programs.

It's already in Schengen.

It's already in EFTA.

It participates in the single market.

It applies a large body of EU leg- legislation.

For further information, see United Nations Support Office in Haiti, AFP, and Reuters.

Brazil begins Mercosur-EFTA trade rollout with Iceland.

Brazil has begun applying the Mercosur-EFTA free trade agreement with Iceland, marking the first bilateral implementation of a wider deal linking South America's Mercosur bloc with four European economies.

Norway is due to follow in November, while Switzerland and Liechtenstein are still completing domestic procedures.

The milestone matters because it turns years of negotiation into actual preferential market access and advances Brazil's push to diversify trade relationships.

Anyway, during the Brexit negotiations, Michel Barnier- [laughs] ... had this PowerPoint slide where they were talking about the options for the future relationship between the UK and the EU, and at the top of the staircase there was EU membership, all bangs and whistles, everything.

And then the next step down was, uh, membership of the European Economic area, or the European Free Trade Association, so a bit like Norway.

Then you had a another step, and then you had a bottom step, which was a free trade deal, like the one that U- UK ended up with, with the EU and then the lowest step, at the b- at the floor, was no deal at all.

And I was saying, the, and Chris, the argument I was making, which I'm sure everyone was really enjoying over the canapes, was, um, that Andy Burnham's now gonna produce his own version of that with all the different options, and one of the options will be the very top step of that staircase, which is full membership of the EU.

mothership of anti-competitive regulation, you have all these satellites.

It's not just the UK, it's Switzerland, it's EFTA countries, it's North African countries.

So there's real concern in the National Security Council, in the White House, in USTR, in commerce, that this spread of European regulation is sort of on the march.

And the UK is a soldier here.

So I told you yesterday that in 16 key European markets, it was about 30.5 share.

Well, today we can bring you the wider numbers of the European Union plus other countries, the EFTA countries and the UK and Norway and things and so on.

That's a 29 market share.

Chinese brands have more than doubled registrations to a record 11.7 share, led by BYD, Cherry and SAIC.