EU-India trade pact a strong missive to Trumpism

Overnight, a deal in the making for 19 years has become a promising blueprint of cooperation between two middle powers.

- AJAY DUA

One of the quickest conclusions to prolonged deliberations between two parties, both of which believe as much in process as in outcomes, came with a joint announcement in New Delhi on the day following India’s 77th Republic Day on the 26th January.

The heads of the European Union (EU) Council and the Commission, who were the two chief guests at the customary Republic Day Parade, jointly declared along with the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, that they had successfully concluded their laborious negotiations to enter into a bilateral comprehensive trade and economic partnership. Alongside this, their representatives signed an agreement on promoting defence and security cooperation, and entered into a mutual arrangement to facilitate the mobility of students and workforce to the European member states.

Such landmark understandings between the two “middle powers” in a fast-fracturing world, hold the promise of meaningfully denting the strengthening hegemonistic trends in both Western and Eastern spheres. The United States of America, hitherto the benign hegemon providing political, economic and military support to Europe, had suddenly changed its attitude and stance, and the transatlantic relationship was falling to its nadir. Beginning with chiding the European nations for not paying enough for their defence through NATO, President ‘Trump’s’ threats to impose additional tariffs on eight European nations in the context of ownership of Greenland, and his contemptuous comments on the role of allied soldiers in the long war vainly fought in Afghanistan, had begun to visibly irk the European leaders.