More than trade relations?

Almost seven years after the EU and India held their first summit, European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner spoke enthusiastically, on a four-day trip to India last month, of a strong and growing relationship with India.

She emphasised the EU’s intentions to work with India not only on trade but also on security and the fight against terrorism, climate change, human rights and democracy. She announced plans for EU spending of €470 million in 2007-13 on development assistance projects in the country.

But in India many people question whether there are common interests outside trade and investment. As one senior European diplomat based in Delhi puts it: "Indians only have the vaguest of ideas what the EU is. They tend to dismiss it." But the head of the European Commission’s delegation in New Delhi, Francisco da Camara-Gomes, disagrees. He says that although India has a very strong perception of the EU as a trading bloc, this "co-exists with growing awareness of the EU’s political role and does not prevent India from engaging the EU in political dialogue over common values and shared interests".

Indian commentators have mixed views on whether the EU is seen as a serious international political player. Ram Reddy, editor of Economic and Political Weekly, thinks that "Indians do see the EU more as an international organisation, rather than as a force in international politics". "They see the US as far more important than the EU."

But amid the trees and crumbling, faded buildings of the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University, Professor R. K. Jain - that rarest of Indian experts, an EU scholar - argues that since the launch of the EU-India strategic partnership in 2000 there has been a sea-change in attitudes. "India," he says, "is simultaneously engaging all the major powers, so [EU-India] is part of that."

"Patten used to say that India does not take the EU seriously but I think it’s changed," he adds, referring to Chris Patten, Ferrero-Waldner’s predeccesor as commissioner for external relations.

Professor Radha Kumar, a leading foreign policy expert at Jamia Mullia Islamia University in Delhi, agrees: "I do think EU-India relations have changed enormously from their start with a fairly formal and rather fraught set of trade relations. In the last two years, with the EU-India action plan, it has become rather substantial…and in the last year we’ve seen a huge amount of coming and going with European politicians."

But European diplomats acknowledge that trade remains at the heart of EU-India relations - not least since the Union is India’s number one trading partner. The EU-India summit in Helsinki last autumn agreed to move towards negotiations on a broad-based trade and investment agreement. But whether the EU can agree a negotiating mandate and move to a deal within a couple of years as India hopes is open to question. Nor is India expected to be willing to sign up to the range of clauses on human rights, environment or the International Criminal Court on which the EU usually insists.

Jain argues that differences over agriculture, as in the current negotiations at the World Trade Organization (WTO), will remain crucial: "The common man is concerned about EUsubsidies and the WTO."

Jain doubts whether the EU’s soft power approach, based on trade and aid, gives it much foreign policy influence beyond its own candidate countries.

Radha Kumar says: "One of the problems with the EU is that it still concentrates on soft power and then comes here to meetings, and MEPs are into talking on social reforms and child labour [and not foreign policy]." But she emphasises that the Indian government is keen to develop several relationships on the road to a multipolar global order and not only to give priority to the US.

But for many Indian analysts, the US is a serious geopolitical player in a way the EU does not begin to match. "On many political security issues, there’s a feeling that the US understands, as it has a geopolitical perspective to Asia which the EU sorely lacks," says Jain, adding that the US has "a security perspective - such as India as a counterbalance to China - that’s a zillion miles away from how EU policymakers look at it…so the US is looked at as a major player who will move the chessboard and other pieces will gradually fall in line…and the EU will accept reality."

For Reddy, Indians "have seen that the US scored over the EU in deciding Iraq policy, in slowing the Kyoto Protocol, in driving international policy towards Iran - and in attempting to reshape the global nuclear rules vis-à-vis India".

"Hence the perception that the US is far more important on the global stage. The EU may be more active in climate change, Bosnia, NATO expansion, etc. But those are not Indian government or elite concerns," he adds.

Climate change, the International Criminal Court and civil nuclear power are repeatedly cited as areas of difference between the EU and India, while it is suggested that on security and the fight against terrorism the EU is not seriously interested in joint work. The US has scored strongly in India with its deal on civil nuclear power. Jain calls it "ridiculous" for the EU to insist that India should sign up to the Non-Proliferation Treaty: "No one takes them seriously but the EU has to say it for the record."

"China and India are assertive and revisionist powers. They want a rules-based order but rules that reflect today’s geopolitical realities."

If the EU wants to work with India on that new global order and not only on trade it has got some serious foreign policy work to do.

• Kirsty Hughes is a freelance journalist based in London.

Almost seven years after the EU and India held their first summit, European Commissioner for External Relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner spoke enthusiastically, on a four-day trip to India last month, of a strong and growing relationship with India.