Speaker of India's Lok Sabha Sumitra Mahajan met European Parliament President Martin Schulz here and discussed the parliamentary ties and cooperation between both sides.Both leaders met on Tuesday afternoon and later Schulz hosted an official lunch for Mahajan.Underscoring the strategic partnership between India and the Eureopan Union (EU), Mahajan noted that the EU is India’s largest regional trading partner while India was the EU’s ninth largest trading partner in 2014. She hoped that progress can be achieved on the India-EU Broad-based Trade and Investment Agreement, and highlighted that it needs to be a win-win situation for both sides.
She invited active EU participation in India’s development initiatives, according to Indian embassy sources. She also spoke of women’s empowerment in India and informed the European Paliament president that 50 percent of the seats in local bodies in India are reserved for women.In the area of foreign policy, M ahajan noted that India believed that prosperity in the region requires an economically inter-linked neighbourhood and stability with sensitivity to each other's security concerns and zero tolerance of terrorism.