External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar said on Wednesday that the international situation wants nations like India and Belgium, which have a close relationship, to engage more deeply. In his opening remarks at the India-Belgium Strategic Dialogue with his counterpart Maxime Prevot in Brussels on Wednesday, EAM Jaishankar said that both countries have an opportunity of not just building on the current "very substantive relationship", but can also do a lot in the field of clean energy, digital technologies, life sciences, chemical industry, logistics, manufacturing, etc.
He stated that India's ties with Belgium are very much in tandem with those with the European Union (EU) which are acquiring a strategic character due to the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between both sides. "I think both bilaterally and globally there is a strong case for us to engage more.
What we are doing with Belgium is very much in tandem to what we are doing with the European Union. You are in a way the core of the European Union and I would say we can see in front of our eyes that the Indian relationship with European Union is acquiring a strategic character.
"So, the FTA itself, we explain to our own people, is something much bigger than just a trade agreement. But, along with the FTA, today we have a security and defence partnership. We are negotiating a security of information agreement. We have a mobility framework.
We are here for a trade and technology council with some of the major European initiatives like the global gateway or in the research side, we are trying to get involved with Horizon Europe," he said. EAM Jaishankar mentioned that New Delhi continues to bat for a deeper engagement in pretty much every sector.
The process, he said, has been launched and would be in an advanced stage soon. "Our discussions, in fact, is how do we speed it up. Few months ago, people said we'll do our best by the end of the year so that by next year everything is ready."
He noted that international economy faces several challenges like overdependence on sources of production, access to some markets and connectivity. EAM Jaishankar mentioned that the tensions happening around the world cannot be contained regionally and have a cascading impact.
"The international situation today really warrants countries like ours, which have a close relationship, to engage with each other more deeply. It's very clear that the international economy itself faces today structural challenges, challenges of overdependence on sources of production, challenges of access to some markets, challenges of connectivity, we are seeing it very sharply today in the Gulf, challenges of logistics, sometimes of technology.
So, what we do to stabilise and to de-risk and to diversify, I think is today really the central issue in world diplomacy and certainly one that should that should engage us." "The second aspect, of course, is what is you know... the levels of conflicts and tensions which are happening around the world and it's very clear that in a globalised world you know they cannot be contained regionally anymore.
If one looks at 25 years ago, you could have had a problem in one part of the world with others relatively insulated... That is not the case now, whether you look at what is happening in Ukraine, what is happening in the Gulf, to some degree, what's happening in Africa, tensions rise in the Indo-Pacific, every part of it really spreads it has a sort a cascading impact and often actually turns up in uh ways which are not readily anticipated," he added.