The strategic relationship between the European Union and India witnessed new momentum in 2025. Together accounting for roughly one quarter of the global economy and around two billion people, the partnership is increasingly central to shaping the future of trade, climate cooperation, and sustainable development.
At this juncture, the Florence School of Transnational Governance convened a high-level Policy Dialogue titled ‘Perspectives on the EU–India Strategic Relationship.’ The public discussion followed a closed-door roundtable held the previous day, ‘The EU–India Strategic Relationship Beyond the FTA: Toward a Win–Win Clean Economy Investment Package.’
The roundtable brought together senior diplomatic and economic experts from Europe and India to examine next steps in the bilateral agenda, with a focus on the clean economy across investment, technologies and policies. Its objective was to explore a positive, win-win vision informed by pragmatic experience.
Building on those exchanges, the Policy Dialogue reflected on the implications of the political conclusion of the EU–India Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and on how the partnership can move to implementation.
Dammu Ravi, former Secretary (Economic Relations) of the Ministry of External Affairs of the Government of India, underlined the broader strategic potential of the agreement: “We can create great economic force that is able to create win-win for both sides, but also find solutions for the Global South. One of the issues that we discussed yesterday and today is how this FTA can be made useful even further.”
Vincenzo De Luca, former Ambassador of Italy to India and Nepal, emphasised that the agreement should be seen as a starting point rather than a conclusion: “the Free Trade Agreement is only a first step in a process where we would like to share more investment and more technology to improve the situation in terms of climate change commitment both in Europe and in India.”
The sustainability dimension of the FTA featured prominently in the exchange. As noted by Pedro Silva Pereira, former Vice-President of the European Parliament during the discussion: “the agreement has a chapter on trade and sustainable development, where we can find […] commitments on climate change, on the Paris Agreement, on environmental protection, on compliance, and also on topics like labour rights and [...] provisions on gender and trade.”
A historical perspective was offered by Sangeeth Selvaraju, Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science Grantham Research Institute, who quoted former Indian representative to the WTO Mohan Kumar: "India is the first major economy in the world that has been asked to take a low-carbon development. Everybody else has polluted to their heart's content and got developed."
He further highlighted the investment dimension of the transition: “We need to chart this way forward and that requires compromises on all sides. But it needs a clear acknowledgement of the extra effort that it will take, and who is going to foot the bill for that extra effort is what we are going towards now. And that's where I think the investment needs to be.”
The Policy Dialogue was introduced and moderated by Jesse Scott, Senior Fellow at the Florence School of Transnational Governance and the Observer Research Foundation. In leading the discussion, she connected the themes explored during the closed-door roundtable with the broader questions addressed in the public session and guided the exchange with both panellists and the audience.
Opening the event, Johanna Mair, Director of the Florence School of Transnational Governance, emphasised the role of the School as a platform for sustained engagement: “We are a European school, based in Florence, but our outlook is global, and our work – in both education and research – is inherently transnational. The EU–India partnership is therefore not a side topic; it is a core example of the kind of complex, cross-border governance challenge that our community of fellows, students and practitioners is here to engage with. In this spirit, I would like to offer the STG very explicitly as a home for continued EU–India conversations – a place where we can test ideas together over time, refine them across disciplines, and accompany them as they move into implementation.”