India-EU FTA: How Tightening Pesticide Rules Could Undermine India's Agri Export Gains

The India-EU Free Trade Agreement is widely anticipated as a watershed moment for bilateral commerce, but food safety has emerged as one of its most contentious fault lines. At the centre of the dispute is the EU's proposal to abolish import tolerances for pesticides that have lost domestic authorisation within Europe — a move that would automatically trigger the bloc's default Maximum Residue Limit (MRL) of 0.01 parts per million (ppm) across a wide range of imported agricultural goods.

This threshold — equivalent to just one gram of pesticide residue in 100 tonnes of food — is far more restrictive than the limits set by the internationally recognised Codex Alimentarius, which reflects science-based risk assessments accepted by most of the world's trading nations. Critics, including think tank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI), warn that unless India secures explicit carve-outs and upgrades its compliance infrastructure, the FTA could hand European food products easier entry into the Indian market while Indian exporters continue to face escalating regulatory barriers abroad.

The challenge is not hypothetical — it is already playing out at EU borders. The European Union has issued 365 food-safety notifications against Indian products, leading to border rejections, recalls, destruction of consignments, and enhanced import controls. Products under the microscope include chilli, cumin, turmeric, sesame seeds, rice, seafood, fruits, vegetables, herbal products, and food supplements.

Several of these — sesame seeds, chilli peppers, curry leaves, okra, and select herbal products — now face 20–50% physical inspections and laboratory testing at EU entry points, raising costs, delaying shipments, and eroding price competitiveness.

According to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), pesticide residues account for 19% of these rejections, while the remaining 81% stem from bacterial and fungal contamination, and certification or labelling deficiencies. In mid-2026, Japan also suspended imports of India's Alphonso and Kesar mangoes after identifying deficiencies in approved fumigation and pest-control procedures — underscoring that the problem extends well beyond the EU.

The case of tricyclazole — a fungicide widely used in rice cultivation — illustrates precisely how the EU's regulatory philosophy can override scientific consensus. In 2022, the European Food Safety Authority concluded, on the basis of scientific evidence, that the MRL for tricyclazole in rice could safely be raised from 0.01 ppm to 0.09 ppm. The European Parliament nevertheless rejected that recommendation and retained the stricter 0.01 ppm limit.

At the WTO Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Committee, the EU itself acknowledged that the limit was not arrived at through a conventional scientific risk assessment but through its default hazard-based approach — a methodology that treats the mere presence of a substance as a concern, irrespective of the actual exposure dose involved.

This distinction matters enormously for Indian rice exporters, who must now meet a limit that even the EU's own food safety authority indicated was stricter than science requires. GTRI argues that food-safety measures lacking scientific justification should be actively challenged through bilateral consultations, FTA mechanisms, and the WTO SPS Committee.

One of the starkest findings in the GTRI analysis is the structural imbalance in how pesticide use is regulated at home versus how it is policed at the border. In 2023, EU farmers used approximately 300,000 tonnes of pesticides against India's 40,000 tonnes. On a per-hectare basis, EU pesticide application averages 2.67 kg — more than eleven times India's 0.24 kg.

The EU also registers nearly 600 pesticides for domestic use, compared with 372 in India. European apple farmers alone are permitted to use 256 pesticides on that single crop; Indian farmers are allowed only 54.

Despite this, imported European apples, California almonds, and West Asian dates rarely undergo the comprehensive residue testing that Indian exports routinely face overseas. GTRI notes this reflects weaknesses in India's own surveillance, laboratory testing, and border-enforcement systems. China offers a counter-model: between 2013 and 2019, Chinese authorities rejected or returned an average of 740 EU food consignments per year for food-safety violations — demonstrating that rigorous import enforcement can coexist with active international trade.

Ajay Srivastava from GTRI and Shantwan Dixit from the Centre for Environment and Agriculture argue India needs a strategy that is both defensive and offensive.

On the domestic side:

• Establish farm-to-port traceability systems and strengthen farmer guidance on pesticide application.
• Expand the network of internationally accredited laboratories and build a stronger Indian-originated accreditation system.
• Mandate routine residue monitoring and sharpen enforcement by FSSAI, customs, and plant and animal quarantine authorities.
• Create a dedicated Food-Safety Monitoring and Response Cell to track regulatory shifts in export markets and provide early warnings to exporters.

On the trade-policy side:

• Apply risk-based sampling and laboratory testing to imported consignments, rejecting shipments that fail Indian standards — the same rigour Indian exporters face abroad.
• Proactively challenge food-safety measures that lack scientific justification through bilateral consultations, FTA mechanisms, and the WTO SPS Committee.

Without action on both fronts, GTRI warns, many of the export gains expected from the India-EU FTA may never materialise.