On Wednesday, Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla met with the Ambassadors of the member states of the European Union (EU) to discuss the upcoming India-EU+27 Leaders’ Summit, which is scheduled to take place in May. The spokesperson of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Anurag Srivastava, calling the EU a “natural partner” of India, said that the leaders further discussed “trade, investments, climate change, and Indo-Pacific.” Ugo Astuto, the European Union’s Ambassador to India added that multilateralism, global health, digitisation, and connectivity also featured in Wednesday’s discussion.
On the same day, India and the EU also convened for their first maritime security dialogue. The virtual discussion was chaired by the Indian Joint Secretary Sandeep Arya and Joanneke Balfoort, the Director of Security and Defence Policy of the European External Action Service. According to a statement released by the MEA, “The consultations involved exchanges on developments in maritime security environment, regional cooperation activities, developments of mutual interest and opportunities for cooperation between India and the EU.” This dialogue aims to enhance “mutual understanding and cooperation” between the two sides. Moreover, it furthers the vision of the India-EU Roadmap to 2025, which was adopted by both the countries during the 15th bilateral Summit in July 2020, and acts as a guiding document for India-EU relations for the next five years.
This comes just over a month after Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar convened a meeting with the envoys of the Visegrad Group, which included Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. During this meet, they discussed the prospect of bolstering India’s relationship with the EU. India is also looking to secure a Free Trade Agreement with the European Union, which has been a challenging negotiation to conclude. However, due to the importance of the European market, India has held stand-alone summits with Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Denmark and Italy to push for economic partnerships at the bilateral level. While both the EU and India have expressed the importance of such a deal since 2007, the conversation has been halted since 2013. There are several issues that the two countries disagree on. The EU has previously complained that the Indian side refuses to adequately open up its automobiles and wine and spirits market to the EU. Further, India has shown resistance to allowing access to European firms into its financial sector, specifically for “banking, insurance and e-commerce”. Moreover, the EU’s insistence on including issues such as labour regulations and environmental laws into the FTA is also unacceptable to India. In the past, these have proven to be points of major contention between the two parties.
Meanwhile, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi also hosted a “working luncheon” with the EU ambassadors in Islamabad with the aim to bolster the two sides’ friendship. According to a press release by the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Qureshi expressed his appreciation for Pakistan’s “relations with the European Union, which are based on shared values and common objectives of peace, prosperity and development.” During the meeting, he addressed “the grave human rights situation in Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu & Kashmir and underscored the importance of peaceful solution of the Jammu & Kashmir dispute in accordance with relevant UN resolutions.”
Indian Foreign Secretary Meets EU Ambassadors
On Wednesday, Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla met with the Ambassadors of the member states of the European Union to discuss the India-EU+27 Summit, which is scheduled for May.
January 21, 2021
SOURCE: ANI