The Hindu Business Line : Coming closer

THAT NEW DELHI FIGURES in the Brussels' world view was underscored by the Indo-European Union Summit in The Hague deciding to expedite the pact for India joining the EU's Galileo global positioning system. The Summits — this is the fifth since the first in Lisbon in June 2000 — have done much to foster bilateral cooperation between the second most populous nation and the world's single biggest economic bloc of 25 countries and a seamless market that is home to over 450 million people. But if India has not been able to leverage fully the relationship it is because of its own internal controls that stymie free market forces and the gradualist economic reforms process.

This could change, with the original reform architect, Dr Manmohan Singh, now as Prime Minister. To play the key role in the global economic arena, India must heed the influential European Council Secretary-General, Mr Javier Solana, who said last year that the EU should in the next five years focus on developing strategic partnerships with Russia, Japan, China, Canada and India. It must build on a relation that dates back to the 1970s when the European Commission, along with the World Bank helped India become the world's leading milk producer through Operation Flood. Now, India and the EU have several successful joint-ventures in such key sectors as civil aviation, science and technology, the space industry, information technology and telecommunication. To this will be added the Galileo project that promises help through satellite imaging in areas as varied as land and maritime transport, environment, agriculture, fisheries, tourism and exploitation of natural resources. The decision to establish an energy panel, with the EU promising to work on the modalities of India's involvement in the ambitious International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project on fusion energy, should cement the upgradation of relations to strategic partnership status.

Even as the political cooperation widened and deepened, there have also been irritants in the bilateral trade relations. For instance, India's competitive textile industry has had to bear the brunt of the EU's repeated anti-dumping and anti-subsidy probes, not to speak of the preferential tariff concession extended to Pakistan for its textile exports. New Delhi had to move the World Trade Organisation whose appellate panel rejected the EU's preferential treatment to Pakistan textile goods. India has also been a fierce opponent of the EU's lavish farm subsidies that tend to distort the global grain market, denying growers of poor countries a fair return for their toil on the soil. If a way can be found to end such irritants, India and the EU can come closer still and leverage the synergies of a large market and a rich bloc.