By EuAsiaNews,
Brussels : The EU-India strategic partnership launched in November 2004 is overshadowed by the India-US and India-China partnerships, both of which deal with issues of immediate and overweening interest for India.
By contrast, although the EU is engaged in South Asia and its neighbours are a priority for India, India has little to gain from EU support, as the EU still has limited leverage in South Asia.
The American and Chinese attention to India are what influenced the EU to seek a strategic partnership with India in the first place, and in the near term these realpolitik factors are likely to influence EU relations with India more than will the normative factors of pluralist democracy that both regions cite as shared characteristics
These are some of the conclusions drawn by a new book titled “Who is a normative foreign policy actor?” The European Union and its Global Partners,” published this week by the Brussels-based research institute, The Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS).
The chapter on “INDIA AS A FOREIGN POLICY ACTOR – NORMATIVE REDUX” is written by Professor Radha Kumar, Director of the Mandela Centre for Peace and Conflict Resolution at Jamia Millia Islamia University and trustee of the Delhi Policy Group.
This chapter analyses India’s behaviour as a foreign policy actor by looking at India’s changing relations over the past decade with the EU, US, China, Japan, Myanmar, Pakistan, Nepal.
Here are some more excerpts from the book:
“The EU has used normative means to expand the partnership with India through its funding programmes, targeting university, media and think tank exchanges.
The initiative has by and large been one-way:the Indian government has not targeted European universities, media and think tanks; some Indian analysts view EU development assistance as a projection of its soft power.
Nevertheless, the EU and India are building institutional ties at a number of different levels, which will strengthen the normative elements of the partnership over time.
The problem is how much time – meetings are still relatively infrequent and interactions between EU and Indian officials are around one-twentieth of those with China .
Despite their efforts, the EU is relatively unknown in India and India is known only in those member states with which it already had strong bilateral relations.
Internally, India has yet to come to grips with the EU as an umbrella institution for European countries.
Within India, EU member countries are more active diplomatically than the EU is.
The EU erroneously sees this as a ‘visibility’ problem to be solved through better communication and pople-to-people contacts, but most Europeans view themselves and are viewed as citizens of a particular European country rather than an overarching European Union.
Until some balance is achieved between the EU and the member states, the EU will be seen more as a funding and trading organisation than as a strategic policy-maker.
Of the implementing groups set up under the Joint Action Plan, the ones that have worked, in terms of moving to next steps, are in science and technology, alternative energy, bio-fuels, aviation, maritime matters and trade.
The soft-power elements of the partnership – civil society and cultural exchanges and think tank round tables – have become marginal.”
The author concludes that “EU-India relations will grow steadily but at a low profile; both hard and soft-power elements of the strategic partnership could be replaced by research and development goals.”