India-EU security & defence partnership a ‘political enabler’, more on the way, says EU envoy Delphin

The recently concluded India-EU summit was ‘historic’, says Herve Delphin, the EU Ambassador to India, highlighting growing strategic convergences between New Delhi & Brussels.

EU’s Ambassador to India Herve Delphin | Source: X/@EUAmbIndia

New Delhi: The India-European Union (EU) Security and Defence Partnership is the “political enabler” for deeper strategic ties, while an intelligence agreement under negotiation will become a “legislative enabler” for more sensitive cooperation, EU’s Ambassador to India Herve Delphin said Friday.

“The Security and Defence Partnership will enable deeper cooperation in counter terrorism, where we are already very active. It will allow cooperation in cyber space…Space, which is a new domain. We launched our first space dialogue last year. There is cooperation at an operational level, with seminars and workshops to bring practitioners on both sides to work on concrete manners, such as the terrorist use of drones,” Delphin said at the ‘Diplomat Diaries’, organised by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF). 

In conversation with Harsh Pant, ORF’s vice-president of Strategic Studies, Delphin highlighted that India and the EU are currently in negotiation for an intelligence sharing agreement, expected to be signed later this year. 

“The Security and Defence Partnership is a political enabler, the intelligence agreement is a legislative enabler, which would allow us to share information in sensitive sectors, eventually leading to defence industry partnerships,” explained Delphin. 

The EU envoy highlighted the “real tactical cooperation” in the defence sector with India, especially in maintaining maritime security in the high seas to prevent piracy in the Indo-Pacific. India and the EU recently signed a raft of agreements including a free trade agreement (FTA) last month during the visit of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU Council President Antonio Costa. 

The agreements included the security partnership along with other documents and a mobility framework as well. The visit is considered to be “historic” given the number of action points both sides have identified including in areas such as critical minerals, green and renewable energy and advanced technologies, said Delphin. 

For the EU, which has long invested in its trans-atlantic partnerships and China, the movement in ties with India comes at an inflection point in global geopolitics. Delphin said that even “five years ago” such an agreement would not have been easily imagined. The reason for the shift in Brussels’ priorities stem from three clear shocks—the US’s changing role in the trans-atlantic partnership under President Donald Trump, China’s expansion of manufacturing capacity hollowing out the EU’s manufacturing sector, and the Russia-Ukraine war since 2022. 

The Security and Defence Partnership with India is the ninth signed by the EU in the last few years. It could potentially lead to India linking up with the EU’s ‘ReArm Europe’ plan, which would see close to EUR 850 billion spent on upgrading the member-states’ defence capabilities. 

(Edited by Gitanjali Das)