Tallinn, May 23 (PTI) Estonia can be the gateway to northern European markets for India once the FTA with the European Union comes into effect, Indian Ambassador Ashish Sinha has said, asserting that the bilateral relationship is on an upswing.

In an interview with PTI, Sinha said there is a robust base of existing trade to be used as a “springboard” for further engagement between India and Estonia when the India-EU free trade agreement comes into force.

The Indian Ambassador to Estonia asserted that the overall bilateral relationship is going from strength to strength and getting stronger.

“Going forward, with the India-EU FTA, there will be far more engagement of the small and medium-sized industries, and the dairy and agriculture products from Estonia will find their market in India. For India, we will have Estonia as a gateway to northern Europe,” Sinha told PTI.

Noting that Estonia also offers e-residency, Sinha said many of the Indian businessmen and high-value industrialists have taken Estonia's e-residency, and about 5,000 Indians are part of the Estonian initiative.

“About over 1,000 Indians have their companies registered under the e-residency programme of Estonia,” he added.

“So, there are elements which provide a basis to use as a springboard when the India-EU FTA comes into force for further engagement. I must tell you that Indian exports to Estonia not only grew but it has overshot their target in the last financial year,” the Indian envoy said.

The new and emerging technologies are going to form a major part of the business, he said.

“Digital technologies, IT, AI-enabled technologies, software as a service, all these areas have great potential. Estonia is the world leader, and so is India.

“Our digital public infrastructure and our capacity to roll out digital innovations at the population scale, and Estonia's proven capacity to use digital transformation of its citizen services, both have great capacity to learn from each other and grow,” Sinha said.

Asked about India's perspective on regional security in the context of the Ukraine-Russia conflict, he said India and Estonia are both democracies, have democratic, plural values, respect for international law and want to grow, and for that “we support international peace and security”.

"In that context, Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Moscow and Kyiv both in 2024 and was one of the first leaders to assert that this is not the era of war, this is the era of dialogue and diplomacy. I am sure Estonia also wants peace in its neighbourhood, and we both have similar objectives there,” Sinha said.

“My job as an ambassador is to articulate India's position to Estonia and report on Estonia's position to India ”, he said.

Talking about the growing India-Estonia ties, Sinha pointed out that India was one of the first countries to recognise Estonia after its independence in 1991 and established diplomatic ties.

“The Estonian embassy in Delhi has been functioning since 2011, and we were functioning from Helsinki and in 2021, we established our mission here. The relationship is on an upswing, and in almost every area of engagement, we have done better and gone from strength to strength,” Sinha said.

In February this year, Estonian President Alar Karis visited India for the AI summit, and last year, around the same time, Prime Minister Modi and President Karis had met at the sidelines of the AI summit in Paris, he pointed out.

During his visit, President Karis met Prime Minister Modi and President Droupadi Murmu to discuss bilateral cooperation, he said.

“Apart from the engagements at the highest level, we also had the latest round of political consultations between the foreign ministries of the two countries, from the Indian side it was led by Secretary West Sibi George, and this enabled the overall review of the relationship in each area of engagement,” the Indian envoy said.

“We have also established a Gandhi statue in Tallinn recently. There are 2,000 Indians staying here and working in the digital and technology sector and doing very well for themselves, with many of them turning into entrepreneurs and getting into the startup space as well,” he said.

So, the overall relationship is going from strength to strength and getting stronger, Sinha said.

He said his message to Indian businesses would be not to look at Estonia's small size, as it may be a small country with a 1.3 million population, but being a member of the EU, it offers the broader EU markets for Indian products.

“It has a very good system, has robust ports, and from here they can cater to neighbouring countries, and we have been able to convince some of the businessmen who have started their businesses here,” he said.

He said businesses are coming, especially in the tech sector and even in the commodity sector; there have been recent beginnings to look at the lucrative northern European market through Estonia.

On January 27 this year, India and the EU announced the conclusion of negotiations for the free trade agreement, described as 'mother of all deals', under which 93 per cent of Indian shipments will enjoy duty-free access to the 27-nation bloc, while import of luxury cars and wines from the EU will become less expensive.

The deal, concluded after negotiations spanning about two decades, will create a market of about 2 billion people. PTI ASK AMS