Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a summit meeting with EU leaders on May 8 in a ‘hybrid’ format. Leaders of the 27 member states of the union were physically meeting in the Portuguese city of Porto for an informal summit convened by Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa; Portugal holds the current Presidency of the European Council. Costa whose grandfather was an Indian has a special affinity with the land of his ancestors. He had invited Modi to meet the EU leaders in a format in which only the US President has earlier participated, thus, underscoring the growing importance of India in EU calculations.
Modi connected with the EU leaders virtually as he decided not go to Porto because of the second Covid wave in India. This was a wise decision at this stage. Modi has also decided not to go to Britain as a special invitee for the G7 summit which is being held there next month. Certainly, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar should have taken a lesson from the Prime Minister’s example of avoiding going to Porto and not gone to London as an invitee for the G7 Foreign Ministers meeting earlier this month. That would have avoided the country the embarrassment of two of his accompanying officials initially testing positive for Covid in London even though Indian tests had shown them to be negative. Later tests showed them to be negative but the damage had already been done.
The documents that have emerged from the summit give details of India and EU’s commitment on taking relations forward on a full range of activities in fostering greater connectivity. As the India-EU Connectivity Partnership declaration noted “The Partnership will support sustainable digital, transport and energy networks, and the flow of people, goods, services, data and capital centred on equity and inclusivity for the benefit of both India and the EU and assisting in global development efforts, based on Sustainable Development Goal principles that no one is left behind”.
It is good that the EU is committing to the principle that “no one is left behind”. The question is if it is willing to walk the talk at this time of the Covid pandemic which is devastating the world. In this context it is also good that the India-EU joint statement noted “Recognising the role of immunisation as a global public good and concurring that the vaccination process is not a race among countries but a race against time, we welcomed the EU’s and its Member States’ contribution to vaccines production and their substantial support to the COVAX Facility, as well as India’s efforts to produce and distribute COVID-19 vaccines to over 90 countries through its ‘Vaccine Maitri’”.
India sent around 6 crore vaccine doses abroad, including through Vaccine Maitri. It has paid a very heavy price for this generosity. On the other hand, there is no indication, as yet, that the EU, for all its fine sentiments, is willing to overlook the commercial interests of its pharmaceutical companies to ensure that the vaccination programme is completed quickly so that the ‘race against time’ is won by humankind and the least number of lives are lost to the virus. This means that like the US the EU needs to become willing to give up the intellectual property rights of its vaccine developing companies and actively cooperate with those countries which have vaccines manufacturing capabilities to ramp up production. It should also absolutely help in establishing cold chains for the transportation of the vaccines and its administration to the people who need them. There is no indication that it is willing to do all this.
Briefing the media on the summit outcomes, Vikas Swarup, Secretary (West), in the Ministry of External Affairs said “the decision on resuming negotiations on trade and investment agreements was I think the most important outcome of the leaders’ meeting”. These negotiations will be held parallelly. They are resuming after a hiatus of more than seven years. They were suspended because major gaps remained between both sides on market access. While the EU was insisting on more easily exporting its automobiles and alcohol with cutbacks by India on custom duties it was unwilling to make relaxations on Indian agricultural products’, among others, entry into the EU. It is uncertain if the EU will show a greater realism about India’s situation on the trade front so that negotiations can move ahead meaningfully. Trade Agreements between two parties which are so differently placed in industrial and agricultural spheres as India and EU are inherently difficult and therefore no early or easy breakthroughs should be expected.
India and EU reiterated their commitment to a rules based multilateral order and to ‘free, open and inclusive’ Indo-Pacific region. These formulations have by now become mantras and are directed at China and its assertive and aggressive policies in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond. Till now EU was a little reticent at pointing fingers at China but it is increasingly realising that it its no longer tenable for it to tread warily on this issue. As its relations with the US get on a more even keel under the Biden administration there are greater prospects that it will sharpen its position on China in the security and the economic sectors though it will not be easy for it to do so.
Finally, it is noteworthy that India-EU have resumed their human rights after eight years. This is a possible source of becoming an irritant but, all in all, there are good prospects of a forward movement in ties across a broad range.