By EuAsiaNews
Brussels: India’s European partner, the European Union (EU), is something of a stranger to the Indian media, even though New Delhi has maintained a close working relationship with the EU since 1962. That’s when India posted an ambassador to the then 6-nation European Economic Community, the starting point for today’s 27-nation European Union.
The EU is hard to pin down. It is not a federal state like the U.S., with an easily recognizable power centre, headed by a President whose name alone can capture headlines. Nor is it a purely intergovernmental organization, like the U.N.
The 27 countries that make up the EU at present are independent sovereign nations that have agreed to turn over some of their powers to a number of institutions, through which they take joint decisions.
These institutions include the European Parliament, which is elected by the EU’s citizens, and the Council of Ministers which, on the contrary, represents the 27 national governments. The Council is the EU’s political arm.
The Council decides on the basis of proposals put forward by the European Commission, which champions the collective interests of the EU’s 27 members. .It is the guardian, so to speak, of the various European treaties, going back to the 1950s.
New Delhi works closely with the European Commission, through its Embassy to the EU in Brussels to begin with. Ambassador Dipak Chatterjee’s long experience of India’s foreign trade is invaluable as India and the EU struggle to conclude a free trade agreement between them.
A frequent visitor to New Delhi is the European Commissioner for foreign trade, Peter Mandelson. He attended the India-EU Business Summit in New Delhi last November, when he described the proposed free trade agreement as “indispensable,” because it could give “a big boost” to the Indian and EU economies.
Mandelson’s colleague, Mrs. Ferrero-Waldner, the European Commissioner for external relations, was in New Delhi last month. She told an audience at the Indian Council for World Affairs that starting the new year in India filled her with “great excitement and enthusiasm for the year ahead.”
Ferrero-Waldner declared that the “prospects for a deepened strategic partnership between India and the EU are certainly bright.” And she should know, since her officials launched the very idea of an India-EU strategic partnership, and were instrumental in drawing up the Action Plan designed to bring about this partnership.
They set the institutional machinery in motion in mid-2004 with a paper containing an analysis and proposals for an EU-India strategic partnership. The paper identified “the challenges, opportunities and expectations for international, economic and development policies between the EU and India.”
The European Commission’s paper received the political backing of the Council of Ministers some four months later. The Council declared that “it fully supports the Commission’s overall objectives and will work with the Commission towards their implementation.”
The European Parliament adopted a series of recommendations to the European Commission. It wanted the latter to address “global concerns” also, such as non-proliferation and disarmament, terrorism and organized crime.”
MEPs wanted the Commission to “pay particular attention to the India-Pakistan dialogue, including the Kashmir issue.”
The sixth India-EU political summit, held in New Delhi in September 2005, endorsed s Joint Action Plan, setting out the road map for the implementation of the strategic partnership.
The summit was attended by the British and Indian prime ministers, MM. Tony Blair and Manmohan Singh, as well as the President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso and Mandelson and Ferrero-Waldner.
A word about these summits. The first was held in Lisbon in 2000, when the Portuguese prime minister and his colleagues held the EU’s rotating presidency. The ninth EU-India summit will be held in Paris, in the second half of this year, when President Sarkozy will be
holding the EU’s 6-monthly rotating presidency.
The Joint Action Plan which Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Tony Blair endorsed in 2005 covers a wide range of issues. They include not only trade and investment and conomic policy but also political dialogue and cooperation. The Joint Action Plan also provides for the necessary consultation mechanisms, at every level from foreign ministers to experts.
Every summit since the seventh, held in Helsinki in 2006, has received progress reports on the implementation of the Joint Action Plan. The Finnish prime minister, Matti Vanhanen, and India’s Manmohan Singh, “welcomed the steady, significant intensification of the dialogue between the strategic partners.”
The focus of this article has been the EU and its key institutions. It is obvious that Indian officials and India’s embassy to the EU have worked closely with the European Commission in strengthening and deepening the ties that now bind the EU and India together.
The coming year will be a critical one for India and the EU, as they redouble their efforts to conclude their strategic partnership and put the finishing touches to their free trade agreement.
EuIndiaNews will be helping you in a series of articles to follow these events.
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