EU and India – Goals, Challenges, Prospects

Abstract

Mutual interest on the part of India and the EU has grown substantially. Nonetheless, there remain important differences in the goals, challenges, and mutual perceptions of India and the EU. This chapter explores these differences and examines the prospects for EU-India relations. With respect to goals, India has long set great power status as an objective of its foreign policy, while the EU has concerned itself first and foremost with avoiding war, although both have become somewhat more pragmatic in economic cooperation. At the same time, EU-India relations are hobbled by a failure to match lofty rhetoric with deeds in student exchanges and development, by protectionism, and by Indian and European preoccupations with domestic and regional issues. Likewise, while the EU has struggled to come to terms with India's new identity as an emerging power, India has struggled to make sense of what it sees in Europe, at once a former colonial power and an aspiring normative one. Examining prospects, this chapter finds that the two seem close to concluding a free trade agreement, share similar concerns about Afghanistan, and may yet achieve meaningful dialogue on human rights, although on climate change they are quite far apart. Looking ahead, the question remains for India whether, for its own benefit, it can learn to cooperate with the EU and for the EU whether its relationship with India might one day take precedence over its ties to China.