Europe & India
By Dr Maciej Artur Gaca
(Expert, Centre for Intl Relations, Poland)
In the past three years, both the European Union and India have been forced to redefine what “strategic autonomy” actually means. For Europe, the shock came from the pandemic, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the deep realization that its prosperity had been quietly built on external dependencies — on Russian gas, American technology, and Chinese supply chains.
For India, the shock was geopolitical as well as civilizational: the limits of China’s power had become visible, but so had the limits of disengagement.
Today, both Delhi and Brussels are experimenting with new grammars of dependence — not decoupling, but de-risking; not confrontation, but repositioning.
China’s control over time
In October 2025, Beijing introduced a fresh round of export controls on technologies linked to the processing of rare earth metals and the production of high-performance magnets. It was a political gesture with measurable economic weight. Once again, China reminded the world that it can govern the time of global supply chains. It doesn’t need to raise tariffs or ban exports; a simple delay in licensing or a pause in shipment is enough to make the entire system tremble.
This subtle mastery of timing — of making the world wait — has become the new dimension of resource geopolitics. Both India and Europe have learned this lesson. The question is: how to respond without turning protectionism into dogma?
Europe’s response: defensive openness
Europe’s answer has been to regulate. The Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), now in force, sets measurable targets for mining, processing, and recycling by 2030. The European Union has also launched anti-subsidy measures against Chinese electric vehicles — with temporary tariffs reaching up to 37 per cent — and introduced new instruments for screening foreign investments and state aid transparency.
A Polish example, the electric car project Izera (based on Chinese Geely’s platform), shows how fragile this balancing act can be: a European ambition wrapped in an Asian supply chain.
For Brussels, the goal is not to exclude China entirely, but to turn interdependence into a calculated risk, not an existential one.
India’s response: strategic pluralism
India, by contrast, builds networks rather than regulations. Its Atmanirbhar Bharat and Production Linked Incentive (PLI) schemes have created an ecosystem for domestic manufacturing, while partnerships with Africa and the Quad members help secure access to critical minerals. Delhi’s diversification drive has already reshaped global expectations: autonomy is no longer defined by separation, but by multiplicity.
Over the past year, relations between the European Union and India have accelerated — and not by coincidence. The joint Trade and Technology Council (TTC) is already operational, focusing on supply-chain security, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence. In parallel, the 14th round of negotiations on the EU–India Free Trade Agreement is underway, with a political goal of conclusion before the end of 2025. These developments mark a shift in perception: Brussels increasingly sees Delhi not merely as a market, but as a strategic partner in re-balancing Chinese influence across Eurasia.
In this sense, India and Europe meet not in rhetoric but in practice — in their shared understanding that diversification is no longer a slogan, but a language of survival.
Selective openness, not isolation
India’s own policy toward Chinese investment has never been doctrinaire. While the 2020 Press Note 3 restrictions still limit direct investment from China, New Delhi is now considering selective relaxation in low-risk, non-strategic sectors — particularly consumer goods and low-tech manufacturing. This signals a form of conscious balancing: neither isolation nor full openness, but managed interdependence. It is perhaps the emerging model of the post-global era — not cutting ties, but calibrating connection.
Two models, one challenge
The EU protects the logic of the market; India redraws the geometry of the chain. Europe builds defensive walls of rules; India lays adaptive bridges of cooperation. Yet both face the same paradox: how to remain open in a world that increasingly rewards closure.
For Europe, the universality of its solutions — the CRMA’s quantifiable targets, the principle of conditional market access, the rhetoric of “de-risking” — may serve as templates, not as transferable laws. India, on the other hand, turns these templates into practice, guided less by regulation than by intuition.
If there is a common denominator, it lies here: Both sides know that China no longer controls the space of globalization — it controls its tempo. And that, for the first time in decades, makes time itself a strategic resource. — INFA