Year-end deadline for India-EU deal a ‘little unwise’: Bruegel’s Zettlemeyer

India may be restricting the speed of its development by closing itself too much and should allow more trade for faster growth, Jeronim Zettlemeyer, director of Brussels-based think tank Bruegel, says.

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In conversation with Ruchika Chitravanshi and Asit Ranjan Mishra, Zettlemeyer says the European Union (EU) putting secondary sanctions on India doesn’t strike him as being politically or economically plausible. Edited excerpts:

The international order is crumbling underthe Trump administration. What isthe future of international rulemak-ing?

■ It doesn’t look good. The middle path, which is most likely one, is the one where we keep some form of multilateralism or plurilateralism without the United States (US) anda few others. The World Trade Organization (WTO) may continue to exist and work. And the standard of success of this sort of diminished WTO would be thatit basically prevents trade wars among the group of countries excluding the US.

Not much has happened on the proposed reforms at multilateral development banks (MDBs). What is your view?

■ This has to be addressed, and so does the (manner of appointing the) managing director of the International Monetary Fund. It is embarrassing that India has a smaller share than small European countries. In this day and age, the political willingness to do this in Europe has gone up because we need India more.