new delhi the eu wants india to extend the bilateral investment treaties with individual countries for six months but it is unlikely india would do sothe termination of bilateral investment treaties by india is a problem we would like it to be extended by six months and right now it is a hurdle in the fta discussions said geoffrey van orden chair of the european parliament delegation for relations with india on monday the eu wants an ambitious trade agreement but india wants to pick and choosethe eu parliamentarians added they would urge the indian government to look more closely at the recentlyconcluded eucanada agreement which has addressed the issue of arbitration and dispute settlement that india had objected to moving it to a bilateral public forumwhile the indiaeu free trade agreement talks continue to be in a slump indias decision in july 2016 to put 83 bilateral investment treaties with different countries on notice would impact investment decisions from major european countries the eu delegation comprising among others jakob von weisacker alojz peterle cora van neuwenhuzen and neena gill met commerce minister nirmala sitharaman energy minister piyush goyal and minister of state for external affairs v k singhthe indianetherlands bit lapsed in december 2016 and those with france and germany among others will expire from march onwards india put out a model bit text in 2015 and wants this to be incorporated into the fta with eu the eu on the other hand wants the current bits to be extended until the fta talks restart largely because as they say individual european countries dont have the power to negotiate individuallythe euindia fta whose discussions started in 2007 continues to labour under numerous problems the differences over the years have been pared down to some key ones like services and automotives it was expected that pm modis visit to brussels in 2015 would give a fillip to the discussions but apart from some informal talks and exchange of notes there has been little movementbrexit was also believed to impact the euindia fta talks because uk was the main opposition to indias demand on services but as neuwenhuzen said the upcoming elections in several key european countries later this year from netherlands to france and germany might impact their negotiating positions as well weisacker said both in eu and india there could be shared interests to overcome differences in backdrop of us desire to walk away from multilateral tradingindias decision to scrap the bits will not have any immediate effect because all existing investments would continue to be protected for anything between 1015 years new investments however might be affected