EVOLUTION OF INDIA-EU RELATIONS TILL UPGRADED THEIR CO-OPERATION RELATIONS TO A STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP

The European Union and India benefited from a longstanding relationship going back to 1962. The Joint Political Statement of 1993 along signed with Cooperation Agreement of Partnership and Development opened the door for a broad political dialogue, which evolved through annual summits, regular ministerial and expert level meetings. The first India- EU Summit was held in Lisbon in June 2000, which acted a watershed in the evolution of this relationship. Since then there have been regular summit level interactions. Similarly the EU-India Fifth summit in The Hague on November 08, 2004 was a landmark summit, as it endorsed the proposal to upgrade the India-EU relationship to the level of a strategic partnership. At this summit, the EU agreed to treat India as a global and regional leader, and it was decided that the EU would have a strategic partnership with New Delhi. Apart from India, the EU has strategic partnership with only five countries, i.e. US, Russia, China, Japan and Canada. To underpin the strategic partnership leaders from both entities at the sixth summit adopted the EU-India-Joint Action Plan (JAP), which defined common objectives and proposed a wide range of supporting activities in areas of political, economic and development cooperation.