Germany s strategic ties with India get positive spin as ties with China worsen prokerala.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from prokerala.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The EU is India’s largest trading partner; India, in turn, is only the EU’s tenth largest trading partner. And despite the two often having expressed an interest in closer trade and political relations, there has been no visible progress made in the last years. Ahead of the EU-India Leaders Summit on 8 May 2021, host
Mark Leonard talks to
Frédéric Grare, senior policy fellow with ECFR’s Asia Programme,
Raja Mohan, director of the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore and columnist of the Indian Express, as well as
Manisha Reuter, ECFR´s Asia programme coordinator. How does the covid-19 pandemic impact India´s geopolitics and foreign policy? How has the rise of China influenced EU-India relations so far? And what are the prospects of a closer EU-India relationship following the upcoming Summit?
Indien statt China? Europa strebt eine neue Partnerschaft in Asien an handelsblatt.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from handelsblatt.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Brexit: Can the UK really go it alone?
Why the Indo-Pacific?
Experts believe this reorientation toward the Indo-Pacific is about trying to turn Brexit into a success story, while addressing the challenges of a post-Brexit world. Detaching from Europe means that the UK is forced to turn to the rest of the world in a way that was not necessary before, said Manisha Reuter, Asia program coordinator at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR). The UK is in desperate need to replace many of the EU s international trade agreements and look for partners to cooperate on security, climate change and digitalization, she told DW. The UK, just like others in Europe, has realized that many of these partners are to be found in the Indo-Pacific.
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EDITOR’s TAKE
While the shift to Asia as the world’s economic centre of gravity has already happened, Europe also seems slow to wake up to the realisation that ties with countries in the Indo-Pacific might need to go beyond trade.
Obviously, we’re not speaking about Europe aspiring to be a traditional hard power player in Asia, especially as tensions are too high in the region for Europeans to be interested in military endeavours beyond the growing Franco-British presence.
While the US is redirecting strategic focus to the region as part of its Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy, the EU is a top trade and investment partner for many countries in the region.