Examine the significance of the 'National Treatment' principle in international IP treaties and its implications for the India-EU FTA copyright provisions.

National Treatment — the duty not to discriminate between one's own nationals and those of other members — is, along with Most-Favoured-Nation (MFN) treatment, among the fundamental rules common to all categories of intellectual property under TRIPS Articles 3–5 [1]. Its reach in a trade agreement determines which treaty's balance of rights and exceptions India may invoke.

Significance of National Treatment in IP treaties

• Reciprocity without discrimination: a foreign author's work receives the same protection as a domestic one, making cross-border enforcement of copyright workable [1].
• The treaties it names carry their own flexibilities: the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT), which India acceded to on 25 September 2018 [3], requires remedies against circumventing Technological Protection Measures (Article 11) but also permits members, through Article 10 and its Agreed Statement, to extend existing exceptions into the digital environment and craft new ones, subject to the three-step test [2].
• MFN multiplies the effect: an advantage extended to EU nationals must, barring narrow exceptions, flow to all WTO members [1] — a bilateral concession becomes India's global position.

Implications for the India-EU FTA copyright provisions

• The FTA, concluded on 27 January 2026 [5], carries an IP chapter that specifies the international IP agreements the parties must comply with [4]; which agreements are listed in the National Treatment clause is therefore consequential, and commentators have flagged the WCT's omission from it.
• If the WCT is not named, India's defence of future digital exceptions for students, libraries, archivists and intermediaries rests on weaker ground within the FTA's own dispute forum.
• Consequential pressure could build for amending the Copyright Act, 1957, whose Section 52 fair-dealing exceptions underpin educational and research access [6].

Clarity of drafting, not intent, governs later interpretation. India should press for the WCT's restoration in the clause and for express preservation of digital exceptions before signature, and have the chapter examined by a parliamentary committee — securing trade gains while protecting the access-to-knowledge space that TRIPS flexibilities were designed to guarantee.