February 2025 has been a month of intense diplomatic manoeuvring, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi embarking on power-packed visits to France and the United States. While the AI Action Summit dominated India-France headlines, a crucial yet underreported development took place in the south of France—India’s decision to open a new consulate in Marseille.
This might seem like a routine diplomatic move at first glance, but in reality, it shows incremental progress in India’s long-term geo-economic strategy. This is not just about diplomatic expansion—it is about positioning India as a key player in the unfolding global trade realignment.
For far too long, India’s trade connectivity with Europe has remained overly reliant on the saturated ports of Hamburg in Germany and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. In a world where global supply chains are being restructured and geopolitical uncertainties are reshaping trade routes, India must rethink its access points into Europe. And if the Modi government’s current geo-economic manoeuvres tell a story, this is it.
That is precisely why Marseille matters—but it is only the beginning.
The IMEC dream
To understand the importance of Marseille, we must first revisit the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), a grand initiative launched with much fanfare during India’s G20 presidency in 2023. Conceived as a counterbalance to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the IMEC was meant to connect India, the Middle East, and Europe through several multimodal corridors.
The project had immense geopolitical logic. It was a G7-backed attempt to diversify global trade routes, minimise China’s dominance, and create alternative supply chains. But before the ink on the Delhi declaration had even dried, the IMEC dream ran into its first major crisis.
On 7 October 2023, Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel, plunging the Middle East into chaos. What followed was a long war that not only involved Israel and Hamas but also Hezbollah, Iran, and the Houthis, turning the region into a geopolitical hotspot.
The conflict quickly spilled into the Red Sea, effectively rendering key trade routes—the Suez Canal and the Bab al-Mandeb—unsafe for global shipping. Only Chinese and Russian vessels were given explicit guarantees by the Houthis to navigate these waters. The rest of the world, including India, was forced to reroute maritime traffic via the Cape of Good Hope—a much longer and costlier option.
With the Middle East engulfed in uncertainty, the IMEC was declared dead on arrival. But its failure was not just about war. The corridor also suffered from fundamental structural weaknesses such as unclear financial models to de-risk capital investments, regulatory bottlenecks across multiple nations, and logistical inefficiencies in transitioning cargo across sea, rail, and road networks.
The enthusiasm around the IMEC began to fade. Yet, the core idea behind it—the need for better connectivity between India and Europe—remained strong.
So, what was India to do? Wait for peace in the Middle East, which remains elusive? Or chart an independent course into Europe, catalysing the need to connect diverse geographies by friend-shoring supply chains?
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Marseille not a complete solution
India’s total trade with Europe, having surpassed $200 billion in 2023, has immense room for growth. It must be remembered that the two sides are also negotiating an ambitious three-tier FTA (free trade agreement) where unresolved issues on CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) continue.
The reality is that most of this trade still flows through Hamburg and Rotterdam, which are already operating at full capacity.
If India is serious about expanding its economic footprint in Europe, it must develop new strategic gateways. This is where Marseille comes in.
France’s largest port, Marseille is one of the most significant in the Mediterranean, handling an annual cargo capacity of nearly 80 million tons. More importantly, its multimodal connectivity makes it an ideal gateway for trade between Europe, Africa, and Asia.
The port offers a robust road network connected to the European motorway system, a vast rail network with over 150 trains per week linking to 22 European destinations, a river transport system through the Rhone River, and pipeline connectivity for oil and petroleum trade across Europe.
For India, a Mumbai-Marseille trade corridor, announced during Modi’s visit to France, makes perfect sense. But there is a catch—Marseille alone cannot solve India’s connectivity aspirations for Europe-wide trade, especially in reaching the untapped Central and East European markets.
It is in India’s interests to expand its trade relationship with Europe , it must expand beyond Marseille. The French port must be part of a larger Mediterranean trade strategy that includes multiple access points into Europe.
Of the many strategic ports in Europe, two can serve this purpose: Trieste in Italy and Thessaloniki in Greece.
So far, the obvious choice for an Indian trade hub in Greece has been Piraeus due to the Adani Group, which is also a major port along the IMEC. However, it is effectively controlled by China. During the Greek financial crisis of 2009, Piraeus was sold to China’s Cosco, making it a less-than-ideal option for India.
Instead, India should focus on Thessaloniki, which offers less Chinese influence, better connectivity to Central and East European markets, as well as strategic access to the Balkans and the Black Sea. That said, its annual cargo capacity is only about 17 million tonnes at present.
It is Trieste that will be the real deal. While it is smaller than Marseille (handling 62 million tons of cargo annually), its real value lies in connectivity. Unlike Marseille, which primarily serves France, Trieste is a direct entry point into Central and East Europe—a region where demand for Indian exports is rising.
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Toward an MMTT Strategy
Rather than relying on a single port, India must embrace a comprehensive MMTT strategy: Mumbai-Marseille-Trieste-Thessaloniki.
The MMTT approach would diversify India’s trade routes into Europe, reducing its dependency on saturated ports like Hamburg and Rotterdam. At the same time, it will also help leverage untapped markets in Central and East Europe, where China’s 17+1 mechanism of overpromise and underdelivery has led to a general disillusionment from the BRI model.
By expanding its strategic gateways, India can position itself as an important player in restructuring global supply chains, ensuring greater resilience and competitiveness in the evolving global trade landscape.
Most importantly, this strategy aligns with the friend-shoring model, ensuring India’s trade corridors remain as independent of Chinese influence as possible.
Modi’s visit to Marseille and the opening of a new consulate mark significant progress in India’s trade engagement with Europe. If implemented effectively, MMTT could establish India as a key player in global trade realignment. This will also significantly catalyse the actualisation of the IMEC, once the middle eastern part is ready for investments.
The first opportunity to explore the MMTT framework will arise with the largest-ever EU delegation visiting India this month. However, a more strategic moment will be the Three Seas Summit (3SI) in Poland, happening in April. With Warsaw chairing both the EU Council and 3SI, this presents a key opening for India to strengthen economic connectivity with Central and East Europe.
The 3SI initiative is linked to major infrastructure projects aimed at boosting regional connectivity. Notable among them is Via Carpathia, a North-South highway linking Klaipeda (Lithuania) to Thessaloniki as well as LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) infrastructure with sea terminals in Poland and Croatia. Additional projects like Rail Baltica, the Baltic-Adriatic Corridor, and Rail-2-Sea further integrate the region’s trade and transport networks.
With Japan, South Korea, and the US already external partners of 3SI, now is the ideal time for India to join the initiative. Strengthening ties with 3SI economies through actualising the MMTT would eventually enable India to connect South and East Asia with Europe, hopefully via the Middle East, tapping into new trade routes and reinforcing its presence in global supply chains. MMTT, and not just MM, is the piece of the wider IMEC jigsaw that India can currently strengthen—and one that it must.
Swasti Rao is a consulting editor at ThePrint and a foreign policy expert. She tweets @swasrao. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prasanna Bachchhav)