Policy exemptions or not, practice of reciprocity is unfortunately another thing: the Indian consular officials in Europe quite ordinarily collecting visa fees from most visa applicants who are EU national spouses of NRIs, even when the NRIs were not charged for visas to the relevant EU country/countries.

German spouses of Indian citizens -- and their (non-Indian citizen) dependent children -- are a rather special case, in policy, in terms of not being charged the Indian visa fee.