India- EU First-ever Security Consultations

June 14, 2022

First-ever India-European Union (EU) Security and Defence Consultations held in Brussels, on June 10, 2022.

Key Facts

The consultations were held in accordance with the decision taken at India-EU Summit in July 2020.
Consultations were co-chaired by Joint secretary of Ministry of Defence Somnath Ghosh and Joint Secretary (Europe West) of Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) Sandeep Chakravorty from India and Director Security and Defence Policy, from European Union.
Discussions covered the evolving security situation in Europe, Indo-Pacific and India’s neighbourhood.
Both the sides noted number of positive developments in security and defence cooperation area in recent years.
They also counted establishment of a regular maritime security dialogue.

Maritime Security Dialogue

The Maritime Security Dialogue met in February 2022, for the second time. First-ever joint naval exercises between India and EU were held in June 2021.

Means of increasing India-Eu cooperation

India and EU discussed various means of increasing India-EU cooperation on maritime security, cooperation in co-development, co-production of defence equipment, implementation of European code of conduct on arms export to neighbourhood of India, cooperation in co-development and India’s participation in PESCO. They further agreed to increase India-EU defence and security cooperation as an important pillar of bilateral strategic relations.

India-EU Relations

European Union is India’s third largest trading partner. It accounted for 1% of total Indian trade, followed by China (12%) and US (11.7%). EU is also the second-largest destination for Indian exports, after USA. India is the 10th largest trading partner of European Union, accounting for 1.8% of total trade of EU in goods in 2020. India exports engineering goods, gems & jewellery, pharmaceuticals, other manufactured goods and chemicals to European Union. More than 6,000 European Union companies are operating in India, and are providing direct and indirect employment to more than six million people.

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