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BRUSSELS: The European Commission set out plans on Wednesday to deepen cooperation with India in fields such as defense, technology and trade, despite tensions over New Delhi’s close ties to Moscow.
The European Union and India are in the final stages of negotiating a free trade agreement, which they aim to conclude by the end of the year.
Negotiations, relaunched in 2022, have gained pace since the re-election of US President Donald Trump. Faced with Trump’s tariffs, both sides have accelerated efforts to foster new alliances.

EU SEES INDIA AS ECONOMIC, DIPLOMATIC PARTNER
For Brussels, that means planned trade agreements with Mexico, South American bloc Mercosur, India and Indonesia. India sees promise in the European Union, but also in China and Russia.
India has increased purchases of Russian oil since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In the past month Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in China, and its troops joined a Russian-led military exercise. On Friday, US officials called on G7 and EU states to impose tariffs on China and India over Russian oil purchases.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas acknowledged the EU and India had “clear areas of disagreement” that were obstacles to deeper cooperation, but said the bloc did not want to push India into “Russia’s corner.”
“The question is whether we leave this void to be filled by somebody else or we try to fill it ourselves,” she told a press conference. In its document released on Wednesday setting out its vision, the Commission said the EU would further engage with India on curtailing Russia’s military and preventing circumvention of EU sanctions. Despite tensions, the European Commission views India as a fellow upholder of the rules-based multilateral order, and hopes to benefit from its expected rise to become the world’s third largest economy in 2030, the document says.
The EU envisages the two sides negotiating agreements on investment protection and boosting air transport, collaborating on securing supply chains, on green hydrogen, on decarbonization of heavy industry and on research and innovation.
They could also agree a defense and security partnership, as the EU already has with Japan and South Korea, and cooperate in projects in third countries, particularly in Africa and South Asia.

WARSAW: Polish missile or Russian drone? Poland was investigating Wednesday what kind of projectile damaged a house last week during an intrusion into its airspace by around 20 drones.
Initial suspicion was that debris from a Russian drone, shot down by Polish air defense, had hit the building.
No one on the ground was hurt, but the incident provided some of the most dramatic images of the episode, which escalated tensions between Moscow and the NATO allies — already sky-high over Russia’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine.
Polish media reports now suggest that the house in the village of Wyryki in the east of the country was hit by an AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile fired by a Polish F-16 fighter that was scrambled to hunt the drones.
“The investigation is in its preliminary stage, and we must wait for expert opinion to determine what type of weaponry damaged this house,” Anna Adamiak, spokeswoman for the national prosecutor’s office, told AFP.
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has insisted that regardless of what kind of object hit the rural home, responsibility for the incident lies squarely with Moscow.
“All responsibility for the damage caused to the house in Wyryki falls on the perpetrators of the drone provocation, namely Russia,” Tusk declared in a social media post.
“All circumstances of the incident will be communicated to the public, the government, and the president by the relevant services once the investigation is concluded,” he added.
Russia, which launches drone attacks daily against Poland’s neighbor Ukraine, has denied targeting Poland.
According to Adamiak, the investigation into “the violation of Polish airspace” and “endangerment” of people and property concerns all drone intrusions recorded during the night of September 9 to 10.
Poland, a NATO member, and some of its allies deployed aircraft and other military resources to counter the intruding drones, most or all of which were ultimately either shot down or recovered, mainly in the east and center of the country.