An Analysis Of The Strategic Partnership Between Eu And India

Since European Union had established relations with India in the1960s, trade and economic relations has always been the main melody of the partnership, and trade relations had been a growing trend. The further development of economic and political integration of Europe in the1990s coincided with India’s economic reform, which provides the opportunity for further development of the EU-India relationship. However, the development of economic and trade is not plain sailing. With the rise of the Asian economy, the influence of various factors such as the European economic crisis, India paid more attention to East Asia, such as China, Japan. As a result t India-European trade began to decline. Meanwhile in the field of investment, although the European Union has become an important source of foreign direct investment for India, the EU’s foreign direct investment was limited because of India’s restriction on certain sensitive sectors such as Banks and government procurement. In2007, European Union and India started negotiations to sign free trade agreements. However the years of fruitless negotiations are gradually killing the political will and power to sign FTA. With the recession in the Euro Area since2000, and India’s desire to tilt towards the US in security and defense policy, FTA negotiations are no longer the main agenda.In the post-Cold-war era, political cooperation has been slow. Different cognition and perception between the two parties hinder the further development of the political relations. The EU is not regarded as India’s main strategic partner in Asia. The EU member states don’t have consistent position on some problems, not to mention a unified foreign policy. So the EU and India only can strengthen dialogue and consultation on the issues such as counterterrorism, prevention of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, anti-piracy, and energy security. What is more, Dialogue is more at bilateral level. The European Union only can focus more on developing trade and economic relationship with India. In the area of political cooperation, the EU is willing to but powerless.So if two sides want to reverse the trend of slow development of strategic partnership, they have to make substantial political action, not leaving the political cooperation only stay in the level of dialogue and consultation. From the view of prospects, there are a lot of problems and restricting factors appeared in the development of strategic partnership. For example, the uneven development of trade and economic relation, the contradiction of strategic interests, these factors bring certain influence to the development of EU-India relationship. But in the long run, as the change of the global situation, further opening of India’s domestic economy, the growth of political and economic power and the growing independence of the EU’s foreign policy, The cooperation on the polity, economy, military and other aspects will smoothly develop. And the two sides will have a more pragmatic foreign behavior. The relations won’t produce large fluctuations. EU and India will henceforth develop their relationship based on national interests and strategic considerations.