Relations between India and the 15-nation European Union (EU) are a pale reflection today of what they were exactly 40 years ago, when New Delhi accorded diplomatic recognition to the then 6-nation European Economic Community (EEC), the forerunner to the present-day European Union. The country's first ambassador to the EEC, Dr KB Lall, arrived in Brussels to safeguard India's exports to the UK, which were threatened by the loss of Commonwealth preferences, once Britain joined the EEC. But in 1962 the British were in the throes of their entry negotiations, and therefore in no position to take Indian concerns on board. The EEC barely acknowledged India's existence. 

KB Lall's masterstroke was to propose to the two sides that their negotiations successfully concluded, the enlarged EEC should enter into a comprehensive trade agreement with India. The negotiations collapsed, of course, so that Britain's entry into the EEC was delayed until 1973. India again took the initiative, and successfully concluded a trade cooperation agreement with the enlarged EEC that year. This agreement set the pattern for the agreements which the EEC subsequently concluded with the other South Asian countries. 

Dissatisfied with the limitations of the 1973 agreement, India's diplomatic mission in Brussels completed the negotiations for an economic and commercial co-operation agreement with the then 9-nation EEC. While political developments in India delayed the signature of the agreement until 1981, the broad outlines of this agreement set the pattern for the "second generation" agreements the EEC signed with several developing countries, beginning with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Then, in the mid-1980s, Ambassador Arjun Sengupta broke fresh ground by calling for an asymmetric free trade agreement between India and the European Community. But he was well in advance of his time; the European Union, successor to the EC, has only recently concluded a free trade agreement with Mexico.

It can be argued that India's early relations with the EU were so positive largely because the relationship was driven by economics. The goal New Delhi set itself was a straightforward one: how to increase its exports to the new, continually integrating, expanding Europe. The 1994 India-EU Cooperation Agreement, which is still in force, is a far more comprehensive agreement than even the 1981 agreement, because it ranges over the entire field of commercial and economic relations. Political cooperation is more difficult to define, however. The Joint Political Statement which India and the EU signed at the same time as their 1994 agreement provides the institutional framework for political cooperation, including annual meetings at foreign ministers' level. 

The institutional machinery was reinforced in 1997. Since then there have been meetings between senior officials from the two sides - India and the European Commission, as the EU's executive arm - and between their planners; between specialists in terrorism and consular affairs as well as meetings on biological weapons in the margins of international conferences. A network of Indian and European think tanks is being set up, in order to provide academic input to the policy and decision making process at the political level. 

The quantum leap in India-EU relations came, of course, with the decision to organise a meeting at the level of prime ministers. From the EU's point of view the decision to raise relations to the level of heads of state or government is in recognition of the importance it attaches to its relations with the country in question. It is an honour not lightly bestowed; summit meetings take place with only a handful of countries, such as the United States, Russia and China. 

The first EU-India Summit was held in Lisbon on 28 June 2000, and was attended by the Indian Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, and his Portuguese counterpart, Antonio Guterres. The choice of the Portuguese capital and the Portuguese Prime Minister was dictated by the fact that Portugal held the EU's 6-month rotating presidency at that time. But it should be added that the Portuguese government seized the opportunity because it also wanted to strengthen its bilateral ties with India. 

The Lisbon Summit Joint Declaration highlighted a dramatic turn in EU-India. "We resolve that in the 21st century the EU and India shall build a new strategic partnership founded on shared values and aspirations, characterised by enhanced and multi-faceted cooperation," the Joint Declaration stated. It went on to "stress our commitment to promote socio-economic development and prosperity, as well as international peace, stability and security." These brave words were matched by a very wide-ranging 20-point Summit Agenda for Action, which provided for "further regular summits". 

In point of fact the summits have become an annual event. The second was held in New Delhi in November 2001, the third is set to take place in Copenhagen, in October 2002. And yet, and yet…Work on the economic issues set out in the Agenda for Action has continued unabated. Under the EU-India Trade and Investment initiative European and Indian economic operators have joined forces to make recommendations to the Summit on how to promote increased 2-way trade and investment in eight key economic sectors. What is more, the India-EU Round Table, envisaged by the Lisbon Summit, held its fourth meeting near Lisbon in mid-September 2002. The Round Table is the first deliberate attempt by India and the EU to give their respective civil societies a role in the political decision making process. 

The progress made on the economic front is hardly matched by developments on the political front, however. The plain truth is that the political will which brought about the first political summit is already flagging. The driving force behind EU-India relations at the political level is Chris Patten, the member of the European Commission with responsibility for the EU's external relations, even more than Javier Solana, the EU's High Representative for its common foreign and security policy. 

Perhaps one should not make too much of the fact that in a very long and detailed speech on the EU's relations with Asia, Chris Patten devoted just two brief paragraphs to India. His speech, to the Royal Institute for International Relations in London on 6 September 2002, ranged from Afghanistan to the summit meetings between the EU and seven ASEAN countries, China, Japan and South Korea, the so-called Asia Europe Meetings (ASEM). Commissioner Patten nevertheless stressed the importance the EU attaches to India. "Europe," he noted, "has invested heavily in its political relationship with the world's largest democracy, which is also an international actor of the first rank." 

"Yet I am conscious," Chris Patten went on, "that Europe's links with India lack the breadth that we have seen with China, for example. This should not be the case with a country that shares our values," he pointed out, and he undertook "to explore in coming months with Indian leaders how we can give our relationship more weight." 

The relationship clearly merits more weight. But India will have to take the initiative in political matters also, as it did some 30 to 40 years ago in economic matters. Then, as now, it is on its own, speaking only for itself. It is not a member of ASEM; and SAARC, of which it is a member, is in the doldrums. The fact that India is on its own in its dealings with the EU is no bad thing, because it can take bold initiatives, unhampered by the views of others. 

However, in order to do so New Delhi will have to accept the fact that a multipolar world is in the country's best interest, that the 15-nation European Union has as big a part to play in this multipolar world as the United States - and China and Brazil and South Africa. It can be argued that the EU still is at the stage where it is trying to develop a coherent, credible foreign policy. But this was much the situation in the economic field in the early years of the EEC: in the 1960s hardly anyone took the 6-nation EEC seriously as an economic power. It was the recognition which countries like India accorded the EEC that helped it assume the mantle of an important economic player on the world stage. 

But New Delhi will also have to demonstrate to the EU why India is an important political player. The EU's Commissioner for External Relations, Chris Patten, believes it is. But most EU countries tend to see India through the perspective of its conflict with Pakistan over Kashmir. And India's foreign policy, viewed from Europe, seems focused almost entirely on Pakistan. Hence the common (mis)perceptions about India, currently prevalent in the EU. The challenge facing India in its political relations with the EU is to show that it is a global power. Meeting this challenge can only lead to a genuine political partnership between two important political and economic forces, India and the European Union.


About the Author: Malcolm Subhan is a founder-member and Vice Chairman of the European Institute for Asian Studies, a non-profit think tank based in Brussels.