WEB DESK
The 15th meeting of the India-European Union Summit will be held in virtual mode on Wednesday. The Summit will be co-chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, President of European Council Charles Michel and President of European Commission Ursula von der Leyen.
The Summit will review India-EU cooperation covering political and security relations, trade and investment and economic cooperation. It is also expected to discuss developments around the Covid-19 pandemic and contemporary global matters of interest to both sides.
The Summit is taking place in the background of EU wanting to play a more active role globally and also attaching higher priority to relationship with India and trying to look at the partnership in a more substantive way.
The new Presidents of the European Commission and European Council had taken over in December last year. The new leadership believes that EU needs to play a stronger role in the global platform and has shown a lot of interest in India. It was in the year 2000 in which India and the European Union decided to institutionalise the mechanism at the level of the Summit. This year marks 20 years of the Summit process between India and EU. The last Summit between the two sides took place in 2017.
European Union Ambassador to India, Ugo Astuto said that both India and EU share strong bilateral relation. He said, the 15th summit holds high significance as both the partners will pledge together to fight the menace of COVID-19.
Mr. Astuto said, both India and European Union will discuss multiple issues in the virtual bilateral summit ranging from climate change to security and global peace. The Ambassador expressed his confidence in stronger Indo-EU partnership on multiple fronts.