Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-24-Speech-3-056"
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"en.20080924.5.3-056"2
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"Mr President, honourable Members, Mr Jouyet, I am speaking on behalf of my colleague Benita Ferrero-Waldner, and it is a pleasure to speak to you today on the preparation of the summit with India in Marseille on 29 September 2008.
As global players, both sides have a responsibility to address global challenges, and some specific global issues will be raised.
With regard to world trade, we hope that India and the US can resolve their differences over the WTO Round and enable negotiations to get back on track. Climate change and energy are also summit priorities for us, and we hope to sign a joint work programme on energy, clean development and climate change focused on renewable and clean energies, together with two climate-change-related European Investment Bank loans. We will also discuss the global financial crisis and ways in which the world food situation can be addressed.
On bilateral matters, we have some significant joint interests to discuss. The free-trade agreement negotiations that were launched last year have made good progress and now we are aiming for their early and balanced conclusion. We hope to sign a horizontal agreement on civil aviation at the summit. We will also push for progress on the conclusion of a maritime agreement.
Concerning culture and education, our objective is to agree on the launch of a policy dialogue.
Science and technology is also a priority, and the summit should welcome the creation of a European Business and Technology Centre in Delhi and the support provided for this by the European Parliament.
Let me finish by welcoming the recent creation by the Indian Parliament of a group for friendship with the European Parliament. I am sure that this will enable all of you, through contacts with your Indian partners, to convince them that the EU is the most successful and forward-looking phenomenon in international governance of modern times and that we have much to offer each other.
Europe’s relations with India, I have learned now, have been growing in importance for several years, not only because of growing trade and investment but also because of a shared commitment to, and experience of, multilingual and multicultural democracy. In this Parliament you have recently demonstrated the political importance of relations with India, both by setting up a new parliamentary delegation and also by inviting President Abdul Kalam to address the House last year, which was the first time an Indian Head of State had done so.
At this summit we hope to turn this growing political commitment into stronger concrete cooperation, and we can already report a good deal of progress since we agreed a Strategic Partnership with India in 2004 and a Joint Action Plan in 2005.
The first thing to mention is the political dialogue and cooperation that has been strengthened, and there is now a regular calendar of summits and ministerial meetings, an annual security dialogue has been established, and new formats for dialogue in the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation meeting, and this has fostered cooperation even on sensitive issues such as counter-terrorism.
The second point to mention is that the contacts between the EU and India are intensifying, particularly in education, where the European Union has provided funding for over 900 scholarships to Indian students under the Erasmus Mundus programme, and this funding will be continued until at least 2013.
The third point is that economic and technical cooperation has deepened. Science and technology activities and exchanges have intensified and they have also been lifted to ministerial level; new dialogues have been created; an EU-India energy panel has been established; and the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor – the so-called ITER agreement – to which both India and the EU are party, is now in force.
Trade and investment has also continued to expand. EU-India bilateral trade has doubled to EUR 55 billion since 2000, and the EU is now the biggest source of foreign direct investment into India while the EU is also receiving increasing inflows of Indian outward investment.
Development cooperation has continued to increase and we will be using the bulk of our indicative budget of EUR 470 million for India for 2007-2013 especially to support health and education programmes related to the Millennium Development Goals.
So we have achieved a good deal, but there is more to do, and we believe that our relations should be guided by the promotion of peace, human rights and comprehensive security, sustainable development with environmental considerations, social equity and economic prosperity, and the strengthening of cultural and educational exchanges. One of our main aims at the summit is to agree a revised joint action plan to reflect these objectives."@en1
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