The European Parliament is urging the European Union to negotiate a trade deal with India by the end of this year.
EU lawmakers voted 392-44 in favour of the motion, before a EU-India summit next Monday in Marseilles, France.
Negotiations on a free trade agreement began last year, but progress has been slow. Lawmakers called for a "comprehensive, wide-ranging and ambitious" deal. The 27-nation bloc insists an EU-India trade pact would complement any wider deal struck between trading nations at the World Trade Organisation.
The last attempt to strike a deal sunk partly on India's refusal to lift tariffs that protect its farmers from greater competition.
The Indian Economic Times says the EU is India's largest trading partner with a 19 per cent share of India's exports and imports. Two-way trade totaled $82.26 billion £44.7bn in 2007, but India's exports still represent less than three per cent of EU's total imports.
