Gauri Khandekar is a researcher at the Brussels School of Governance at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
On 8 May the EU-India summit took place in an unprecedented format – Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi joined (virtually) the EU Council meeting composed of the heads of state and government of the EU’s 27 member states and the Presidents of the European Council and Commission, an arrangement previously used only for the United States.
The set-up itself signposts the importance Brussels now attaches to New Delhi, especially amidst growing frictions in EU-China relations and rising European ambitions to shape the regional architecture of the Indo-Pacific.