India on Friday sought the European Union’s (EU) support in combating the menace of terrorism during External Affairs Ministry Sushma Swaraj’s meeting with EU High Representative and Vice- President Federica Mogherini.
Mogherini is on a two-day official visit to India during which she called on Prime Minister Narendra Modi and held delegation level talks with Swaraj and Minister of State for External Affairs MJ Akbar.
During their meeting, Swaraj condemning the terror attack in Paris on Thursday and emphasised that terrorism was the gravest threat to humanity at present and both India and EU should strengthen their cooperation to fight terrorism in all its forms and manifestations and demonstrate their firm resolve to show zero-tolerance for such acts.
“The talks were held in a friendly and cooperative atmosphere with exchange of views on bilateral, regional and international issues of mutual interest. The two sides reaffirmed their commitment to deepening their Strategic Partnership. They reviewed progress on the commitments made during 13th India-EU Summit in Brussels in March 2016 including in the areas of counter-terrorism, migration and mobility, water partnership, clean energy and climate change action,” MEA said in a statement.
“As the two largest democracies of the world, India and the EU are natural partners. India greatly values its multi-faceted strategic partnership with EU and the two seek to strengthen multilateralism and rules-based global order for the peace and prosperity for one and all,” it added.
EU is one of India’s largest trading partners with bilateral trade in goods reaching $85 billion in 2016. EU is also the largest destination for Indian exports and a key source of investment and cutting edge technologies. India seeks enhanced level of investments from EU companies in its flagship programmes like Clean India, Namami Gange, Skill India, Start-Up India, Smart Cities, renewable energy and next-generation infrastructure. Both sides also discussed ways to take forward the India-EU Broad Based Trade and Investment Agreement which has been under discussion since 2007.