Key messages
- The bilateral relationship between the EU and India will require a pragmatic approach, anchored in strategic convergences, while mitigating tensions from normative divergences.
- For the EU-India strategic partnership to evolve, Brussels must acknowledge India’s approach to partnerships and adapt by adopting a modular, pragmatic and resilient diplomatic framework.
- However, in the medium to long term, the partnership will have to address normative and value discrepancies, which, despite being frequently emphasised as common in official declarations, remain a source of friction.
- These divergences stem from fundamentally different worldviews that inevitably reflect each side’s interpretation of the contemporary global scenario.
Analysis
Introduction
In July 2025 a group of early-career European scholars was convened to articulate their visions of the relationship between the EU and India. This initiative has resulted in two analyses, each reflecting different visions of the evolving partnership. Looking ahead, as the bilateral EU-India relationship deepens, Europe will increasingly require experts on India to provide nuanced analysis, while India will need to cultivate its own expertise to foster mutual understanding.
This initiative aligns with the Elcano Royal Institute’s Proyecto Generación Europa (Generation Europe Project), which seeks to amplify the voices of young Europeans at a pivotal moment. Likewise, these scholars were drawn from Southern Europe, where academic engagement with Indian studies is less developed compared with the UK, France or Germany. Establishing a foundation for further research and debate on India is essential to enhance understanding and integrate different perspectives from across Southern Europe.
While most analyses of the EU-India relationship conducted so far focus on economic and technical dimensions, normative issues seem trickier to address. These divergencies constitute one of the main irritants between the two partners. Although there is a broad consensus on the need to deepen ties, it is equally important to confront the difficulties posed by normative misalignments and misunderstandings arising from differing worldviews at the negotiating table.
The following contributions will address these challenges and offer recommendations. A key point of convergence between the EU and India lies in the firm belief that, amid current global tensions, both actors must lead efforts to promote diplomatic dialogue and cooperation. The two agree that the world’s economy should not be weaponised and that neither the US nor China should dictate the rules of the international order.
Engaging Bharat: how domestic politics shapes India’s foreign policy, and what this means for the EU
India’s foreign policy has become more assertive and interest-driven under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, reflecting deep domestic transformations such as centralised leadership, Hindu nationalist narratives and a shrinking democratic space. These shifts notably affect how India engages with its external partners, including the EU. Brussels faces both opportunities for closer cooperation and challenges stemming from India’s resistance to external normative frameworks. For the EU, the task is thus to craft a pragmatic and selective engagement strategy, balancing strategic ambitions with its normative identity. The following issues must be taken into account:
- Domestic drivers matter: India’s assertive international posture reflects internal political trends, such as centralised leadership, nationalism and a rebooted civilisational framing of identity.
- Normative divergence: India increasingly resists external prescriptions on democracy and rights, complicating its engagement with the EU’s values-based foreign policy.
- Strategic weight: despite divergences, India remains indispensable to the EU’s goals n trade, digital governance, security, and multipolar stability.
- Policy choice for the EU: conditionality risks alienation, while a purely transactional engagement might weaken the EU’s identity. A selective, interest-based approach offers the most viable path.
Domestic politics and foreign policy
India’s foreign policy is deeply influenced by its domestic political dynamics. Since Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to power in 2014, India has projected a more assertive and autonomous posture, invoking a national resurgence and Hindutva-inspired identity politics. While this may have not fundamentally and radically altered Indian foreign policy as such, some implications are evident: a greater reliance on multi-alignment, resistance to external criticism and a sharper rejection of universalist norms. These external shifts are underpinned by deeper domestic trends, including challenges to the rule of law, shrinking civic space, increased market concentration and a redefinition of national identity through the lens of Hindutva. The growing invocation of Bharat, a civilisational conception of the nation, symbolises this redefinition. It frames India as the political expression of an ancient civilisation and reinforces the projection of its uniqueness abroad.
Hence, while strategic traditions in India’s foreign policy may endure, their expression has evolved: non-alignment has turned into multi-alignment, while Delhi increasingly insists on pursuing its rise on its own terms. Back in the 1955 Bandung Conference, universalism was not a source of contestation for India, but rather a common reference point. Today, the rejection of universalist claims marks a departure from that earlier posture, reflecting a new turn. In this respect, India presents itself as a civilisation-state, promoting a multipolar, sovereignty-first order that resists Western claims to universal norms. This shift has moved India towards a more particularist worldview, deepening its suspicion of liberal norms, reinforcing its preference for multipolarity and making it more assertive in rejecting external criticism.
The EU-India paradox
For the EU, India is both a strategic partner and a normative conundrum. Bilateral ties have deepened considerably in recent years. Since 2018 the EU has invested in strengthening ties with India across important areas such as trade, digital governance, green transition and security. Yet India increasingly pushes back against external normative frameworks. As the External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar noted in Brussels in the summer of 2025, ‘the idea that one part of the world will set standards for everybody else is something we are against’. This signals India’s desire to act as a rule-shaper, not a rule-taker, which carries implications for the EU’s external actions, especially given Brussels’ normative anchoring in human rights, pluralism and democratic governance.
The recent 2025 Joint Communication on a New Strategic EU-India Agenda underscores this duality. It broadens cooperation into five pillars: (a) prosperity and sustainability; (b) technology and innovation; (c) security and defence; (d) connectivity and global issues; and (e) enabling factors such as skills and mutual understanding. The breadth of this agenda reflects the EU’s strategic bet on India as an indispensable partner, but its success will hinge on navigating some of the divergences that New Delhi increasingly asserts.Within the EU, the European External Action Service and the European Parliament are the actors that are most sensitive to a normative drift, consistently emphasising democratic standards and human rights in external relations. Their stance contrasts with the more pragmatic focus of the Commission and the Council, creating internal tensions in how Brussels approaches India. On the other hand, India’s civilisationally framed conception of order, sovereignty-first orientation and suspicion of universalist norms widen the gap with the EU’s values-based approach, even as interdependence grows.
Against a backdrop of global uncertainties, including the imposition of tariffs by the Trump Administration, India-EU relations thus demand a slight recalibration. Engagement must be grounded on clear goals and mutual respect. Normative conditionality, if too rigidly applied, risks alienating an increasingly self-assured India. At the same time, a purely transactional approach could dilute the EU’s strategic identity.
Policy implications for the EU
India is not aligning fully with the West, nor is it disengaging with it. It is charting its own path, balancing multipolar ambition with domestic imperatives. For the EU, four possible trajectories loom: (a) strategic convergence, where shared interests outweigh divergences, enabling a deeper cooperation; (b) normative divergence, with democratic backsliding in India straining relations and limiting trust; (c) transactional drift, where cooperation becomes pragmatic but shallow, with little resilience; and (d) democratic renewal (less likely), with a scenario where internal reforms in India reopen space for convergence with EU values, restoring some normative alignment.
India is charting its own course, shaped by its global ambition and its vision of multipolarity. Increasingly articulated through the lens of Bharat, this course reflects a civilisationally framed and ideologically grounded projection of India’s rise within and abroad. The EU should thus focus on areas of shared interest and engage India as it is: a complex, more assertive and yet indispensable partner, navigating its rise on its own terms. The alternative is a partnership shaped more by illusion than strategy.
Between illusion and interest: rethinking the EU’s strategic engagement with India
The EU sees India as a potentially key strategic partner. However, escalating global tensions –from the war in Ukraine to Middle Eastern instability and the lingering effects of the Trump era– are forcing a critical reassessment of the partnership. In addition, the country’s domestic landscape and its calculated ambiguity in foreign policy are a serious concern for the EU. This ambiguity should be treated as a structural element of India’s strategic behaviour, not as a temporary or tactical deviation. In this regard, the EU should reconsider the idea of democratic affinity or a perfectly symmetrical partnership, acknowledging instead the structural differences in institutional logic and strategic agency between the EU and India. A more pragmatic strategy is needed, focusing on sectoral cooperation in areas of shared interest –such as maritime security or digital governance– mainly through bilateral relations of Member States, coordinated within a common European framework.
Indian strategic ambiguity: evasive balancing
India’s strategy of evasive balancing clearly shows the tension between its practical strategic moves and the way it presents them. While India builds up its capabilities and competes with other powers, it carefully reassures countries like China that it does not intend to provoke a security dilemma. This calibrated ambiguity allows India to act as a flexible power, avoiding formal alliances in favour of adaptable partnerships that allow it more flexibility and sustain a strategic identity rooted in the MNA and its ongoing commitment to autonomy. This suggests that India may be deliberately positioning itself as a counterweight to China, potentially pursuing a real strategy of geopolitical seduction aimed at being courted by all major powers.
EU-India relations: the civilisational factor and ideological divergences with Europe
In its relations with India, the EU must consider the country’s civilisational identity and the perception among its elites of Western nations as declining paradigms –ethically, culturally and strategically– unworthy of replication. This outlook, tied to the Hindutva ideology, fuels India’s view of a delegitimised liberal order represented by the EU. In practice, the contrast is stark: the EU is slow, collective and normative. India, by contrast, is agile, ambiguous and highly selective. Attempting to align India with EU ideals would be futile and risks strategic embarrassment.
Still, India is clearly interested in closer access to the European market and advanced dual-use technologies. For New Delhi, the EU is useful: not as a strategic ally, but as a practical partner that can offer tangible benefits. The September 2025 Joint Communication on a New Strategic EU-India Agenda, while updating sectoral cooperation mechanisms, implicitly assumes a broader symmetry –not only in capabilities but also in institutional logic and strategic outlook– while underplaying civilisational and normative divergences, reinforcing the need for a flexible, modular and sector-focused engagement.
India’s internal constraints and vulnerabilities as a strategic partner
India faces many internal hurdles, such as political divisions, inequality, limited technological development, and energy dependence, hindering its potential for expansion. These internal constraints go beyond the economic or political realm; they reflect a deeper reconfiguration of India’s democratic architecture. In this regard, one of the risks of excessive rapprochement on the part of the EU would be falling into a misguided perception of convergence and attempting to impose an ideologically incompatible model, given India’s authoritarian tendencies and illiberal-nationalist components. Rather than a classic power, India is a key systemic actor, which may not become dominant in the coming years but will nonetheless be strategically consequential.
Strategic recommendations for the EU
The following strategic recommendations should be considered:
- Accept India’s structural ambiguity as a partner; abandon the illusion of perfect symmetry or deep ideological convergence. Question the binary logic of ‘ally vs rival’ –India does not fit within that dichotomy–.
- Re-formulate political engagement; understand India’s selective multilateralism as permanent and consider both its objectives and anxieties when defining European strategic interests.
- Adopt modular, pragmatic and resilient diplomacy; promote sectoral agreements with clear ethical lines and use European diversity as a tactical asset. Allow differentiated relationships between Member States and India within a coordinated common framework, managing intra-EU divergences to maintain cohesion.
- Acknowledge real competition with India in third spaces such as Africa and Latin America, where the EU should act as a facilitator, not a paternalistic actor –embracing complexity rather than imposing alignment–.
- Europe must learn to dance to India’s rhythm, not insist on a ‘waltz’ –flexibility is the ultimate strategic advantage–.
Parliamentary diplomacy in EU-India relations: a possible joint approach to deepening political dialogue and strategic cooperation?
EU-India relations gained new vigour following the ‘New Strategic EU-India Agenda’ endorsed by the EU Foreign Affairs Council on 20 October 2025. The strategic document elevates the relationship in areas of shared interests, prioritising economic and security cooperation in an uncertain geopolitical context. With trade assets and energy supply chains increasingly used as tools of international politics, both the EU and India find themselves compelled to diversify their relations and find common ground in a strategic partnership that has remained largely stagnant since its formation in 2004. A long-term investment in political dialogue is critical to this effort. This analysis foregrounds parliamentary diplomacy as a channel to support EU-India political engagement and bridge the normative differences underlying the ambitious cooperation framework.
Parliamentary diplomacy in EU-India relations
While often overlooked, parliamentary diplomacy has long been recognised as an important dimension of EU-India relations. Since 2004 key policy documents have consistently identified interparliamentary exchanges as both an important area of cooperation and an essential component of the institutional architecture supporting the strategic partnership. However, the new agenda notably deprioritises this aspect. As the EU and India aim to move past a stagnating relationship through an ambitious partnership requiring sustained diplomatic communication, de-emphasising a shared commitment to parliamentary diplomacy at agenda-setting suggests a significant shift in the path of mutual cooperation established in 2004.
Among diverse platforms fostering EU-India dialogue, parliamentary diplomacy never evolved into a structured mechanism, despite its relevance in the external action approach of both sides. The European Parliament (EP) established the Delegation for relations with India (D-IN) in 2007. Yet, on the other side, this step towards formalising EU-India parliamentary relations was never met with the same impetus. The Indian Parliament formed an equivalent body, the India-EU Friendship Parliamentary Group, only intermittently, in 2008 and 2014-19. As a result, EU-India interparliamentary exchanges remain unstructured and asymmetrical, taking place mostly through interparliamentary meetings and ad hoc diplomatic visits of the EP’s standing committees relevant to ongoing bilateral initiatives.
Against this backdrop, the decision to deprioritise EU-India parliamentary relations in the new agenda –coupled with the use of a more diluted values-based discourse across the document– points to two main aspects. First, it indicates a pragmatic focus on urgent economic, and security issues. Secondly, it communicates that a deeper political dialogue is now seen as an engagement that may hinder progress on the strategic partnership.
The strategic and normative context of a renewed EU-India partnership
The new EU-India agenda outlines an ambitious plan, projecting the EU and India as ‘mutually enabling partners’ in five areas of strategic cooperation, including trade, technology, security, connectivity and frameworks of structured engagement. Years of bilateral relations primarily in the economic and defence sectors provide the foundation for converging on shared advantages. However, building a stronger EU-India partnership also entails finding constructive avenues for addressing persisting normative divergences on global governance rules and issues that –among other political and structural factors– have so far prevented Brussels and New Delhi from becoming strong partners.
If unaddressed, normative distance on issues like sustainable growth, energy transition, data protection, human rights and global governance reforms risk complicating EU-India negotiations across all strategic sectors. Moreover, the ongoing transformation of India’s domestic politics and foreign policy approach under the BJP-led government directly challenges the EU’s commitment to partnerships based on the founding values of the Union, eg, democracy, the rule of law, pluralism and human rights. How the EU and India set out to navigate these differences is a critical aspect of their current rapprochement that deserves nuanced consideration.
Balancing pragmatic cooperation and political dialogue
Currently involved in multiple pragmatic partnerships that are driven by national interests rather than value-based positions, India has emerged as a more assertive global actor and a more challenging partner for the EU to engage with. These shifts are unfolding in a more fragmented international context, where the declining significance of multilateralism and international law in global politics, combined with a perceived fall of the liberal order, reduces the relevance of a values-based diplomacy.
The new EU-India strategy reflects these complex (geo)political realities. On the one hand, recalibrating the normative dimension of its external action towards India may help the EU negotiate on short-term objectives like finalising the stalled Free Trade Agreement (FTA) by 2025. On the other hand, though, anchoring the EU-India partnership in a shared commitment to engage in areas of divergence remains crucial for ensuring its long-term feasibility. This is a complex challenge that requires a rethinking of available diplomatic mechanisms that can facilitate a sustained political dialogue over time. Parliamentary diplomacy, involving diverse functions, actors and levels, can both complement executive-driven EU-India exchanges on specific issues (eg, trade, security and climate) and enable a long-term effort to enhance understanding of each other’s positions, particularly on divisive and sensitive matters (eg, human rights, democratic freedoms and domestic affairs).
EU-India parliamentary cooperation is not premised on binding institutional agreements; hence it depends primarily on political will. Both contextual and structural dynamics influence the role that parliamentary diplomacy might play in a renewed EU-India partnership. Most notably, parliamentary actions such as the EP’s interventions in events affecting human rights and democratic freedoms in India have caused friction in EU-India relations in the past. Moreover, rising executive dominance and reduced legislative contestation have made India’s parliamentary diplomacy a strategic tool used by the government to support its foreign policy and manage international perceptions, potentially leaving little room for independent initiatives. Against this backdrop, transforming EU-India parliamentary diplomacy from an underutilised channel into a more dynamic platform of dialogue remains complex. Yet de-emphasising its role in a strategic agenda that projects a shared normative basis, with a strong soft power dimension, reinforces existing limitations rather than overcoming them.
The new EU-India strategic agenda marks a pragmatic shift towards an issues-based partnership shaped by the current geopolitical landscape. Its feasibility depends not only on converging interests, but crucially on mediating normative differences. Although so far underutilised, parliamentary diplomacy is an available avenue that could complement executive diplomacy in translating complementarities into tangible outcomes. Its diminished role in the new strategic agenda weakens the institutional architecture of the partnership amid complex political realities. At a symbolic level, it signals a more cautious engagement that restricts political dialogue to executive channels. At a practical level, it risks further reducing parliamentary diplomacy to an ad hoc and unstructured practice. This may undermine the ability to systematically address emerging differences, resulting in potential diplomatic setbacks and limited opportunities to build long-term political trust.
Conclusions
Any solutions?
These contributions provide valuable insights into how divergent normative approaches might shape the long-term trajectory of the EU-India relationship. A key question emerges: could this partnership evolve into a greater ideological alignment? In a rapidly changing global scenario, and as the two increase cooperation in multiple domains, friction is likely to persist. Nevertheless, the authors emphasise what is no longer in doubt: India and the EU stand to benefit from a closer engagement, and the moment to act is now.
On 26 January the Presidents of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and the Parliament, Antonio Costa, attended India’s Republic Day in New Delhi as guests of honour, when the bilateral FTA was signed. During her previous visit to Delhi in February, when von der Leyen travelled with the entire College of Commissioners, she remarked: ‘Europe and India are like-minded partners, bound by the shared conviction that democracy best serves the people’.
Yet, while strategic convergence of interests underpins the relationship, setbacks might arise from differing worldviews. Terms like ‘like-minded’, ‘multilateralism’ and ‘strategic autonomy’ are ambiguous and open to interpretation. Although the emphasis is on shared interests in the current global (dis)order, these nuances reveal underlying divergences.
The texts not only highlight key challenges from an EU perspective but also propose how to address them. These young scholars have noted that core political values permeate the strategic dialogue between the two partners. The normative dimension should not be sidelined in the EU-India partnership. Moreover, this relationship compels Brussels to confront its own internal challenges, issues that mirror some of those discussed here. Illiberal movements are gaining influence within EU institutions and Member States, contributing to a global trend that threatens democracy and its core liberal principles. Polarisation, disinformation and radicalisation threaten political freedoms, the rule of law and the separation of powers.
What is particularly compelling is observing how this partnership evolves at a time when both actors seek to define their roles as global players in an increasingly adverse international environment.
