India will re-engage with the European Union (EU) in Brussels next month when Prime Minister Narendra Modi travels to Brussels on March 30 to attend the India-EU Summit after a gap of four years. The PM will also visit Washington to attend Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) from March 31 and then travel to Saudi Arabia for bilateral visit on April 2.
The first India-EU Summit took place in lisbon in 28 June 2000 and since then 12 annual Summits have been held -- the last one in New Delhi on 10 February 2012. The 12th Summit was the first Summit to be held in India where the then PM Manmohan Singh led the Indian delegation while the EU was represented by Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council and Jose Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission.
India and the EU also interact regularly at the Foreign Minister level and the last India-EU Ministerial Meeting took place in Brussels on 30 January 2013.
India-EU ties went through some cold period last year when the 28-member bloc did not respond to India’s proposal for a brief visit by Modi to Brussels, the EU headquarters, during his trip to France, Germany and Canada in April last year. This had prompted New Delhi to give a cold shoulder to the EU’s efforts to finalise Modi’s visit last November when he travelled to the UK.
However, a meeting between Modi with Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, and Jean Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission, at Paris in December renewed the process of bilateral engagement. This was followed by a visit by a delegation of EU officials to New Delhi last month for a “stock-taking” meeting on the pending Free Trade Agreement (FTA). The meeting on FTA took place after a gap of nearly two years (since August 2015) after India deferred the talks on the FTA following EU ban on 700 products, clinically tested by GVK Biosciences. Sources said FTA is still a long drawn process.
It is expected Modi’s visit to Brussel, the EU headquarters, will to give a fresh political push to the held up FTA negotiations. A team of Indian officials is already in Belgium to prepare background for Modi’s visit. Besides, PM is also expected to seek support from EU for his flagship programmes, and on counter terrorism.
In Washington, Modi is expected to meet his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif at the Nuclear Security Summit. Modi’s visit to Saudi Arabia comes nearly six years after last Prime Ministerial visit to Riyadh. His visit assumes significance given the current regional situation and strained ties between SA and Iran, another strategically important country for India.
Security and counter terrorism cooperation, investment, trade and energy will be focus of bilateral talks in Riyadh. Apart from being India’s largest supplier of crude oil, accounting for almost one fifth of its need, it is also India’s fourth largest trading partner. Saudi Arabia also has the largest Indian diaspora.
