Europe from Portugal to the Indo-Pacific

Choosing India as the external priority of the Portuguese presidency of the European Council was not a happy coincidence. Lisbon correctly read the geostrategic context and prepared well bilaterally, with an unprecedented succession of visits, contacts and agreements since 2017. António Costa now has an open line with his counterpart Narendra Modi, enjoying a political capital [in Delhi] envied by many other European leaders.

The unprecedented EU-India summit of leaders held in Porto in May deepened the EU-India partnership but it was also a political signal that Europe wants to have more weight in the Indo-Pacific. More than a geographic region, the concept reflects the search for a new strategic balance in Asia, more multipolar and less dependent on China. By focusing on India, Portugal helped Europe to rethink its role in the Indo-Pacific and, with it, in a rapidly changing world order.

No other recent Council presidency, including the German one in 2020, has been able to reorient the European Union towards an Asia beyond China. Over the past few years, there has been some skepticism in European diplomatic corridors: do we really need our own vision for the Indo-Pacific or can we continue with the old terminology? Is it not safer to only do business in the East and avoid policies or values likely to irritate China? Why not leave Asia’s strategic issues to the Americans and their allies in the region?

Over the past year, these European questions have given way to the harsh reality of three developments: the failure of the EU-China investment agreement; increasing repression in Hong Kong and Xinjiang combined with renewed pressure on Taiwan; and an increasingly revisionist China in international institutions, especially in the World Health Organization. With Biden’s new leadership decided to continue Trump’s line for the Indo-Pacific, the structural conditions for the beginning of the European turn were thus finally met.

It is in this context that Portugal made an important contribution to adjusting Europe’s strategic helm towards India and the Indo-Pacific. By making India a priority, the Portuguese presidency managed to deepen the debate on the role of the European Union in an international order now witnessing accelerated fragmentation and increasingly conflictual. Anticipating the deepening of the Sino-American rivalry, Europeans and Indians are seeking to diversify their partnerships. This is the fuel of the ongoing EU-India convergence.

The Portuguese presidency thus managed to move Europe from the “if” to the “how” in relation to the Indo-Pacific – the importance of India as a pivotal power, or the urgency of diversifying relations beyond China are no longer disputed, nor the relevance of the Indo-Pacific for Europe. But now, finally, the discussion is about the best way to position Europe in the Indo-Pacific, which necessarily involves closer relations with India, Japan or Southeast Asia.

Although the system is increasingly bipolar, it is simplistic to think that Portugal or the EU are now forced into a binary choice between the US and China. Another fallacy suggests that a choice must be made between democratic values and economic interests. What matters instead is having an integrated, long-term European vision for various critical sectors in order to preserve Europe’s strategic autonomy. From telecommunications to trade and from climate to education, Europe needs to find a balance based on a comparative calculation of the costs and benefits of partnerships with the United States, China, India and other international partners.

To this end, it is urgent for the EU to forge a new internal consensus to rebalance its relations with Asia and, at the same time, forge new capabilities to help rebalance the international system. And unlike China, which has led to deep divisions within the Union, India has had a positive effect when debating how best to forge these two new European rebalances.

Europe is today relatively less central and influential in the world order than it was fifteen years ago, but at the same time it is more pragmatic and aware of its growing strategic deficit. On the other hand, India is today more integrated with the geoeconomic order and much less suspicious of Europe and the so-called political West.

The European Union-India strategic partnership also reflects the growing convergence of two almost diametrically opposed democratic worlds: one post-sovereign, Western and the other still developing, non-Western. The Portuguese presidency contributed to cementing the idea that Europe and India can transform their differences into an asset with positive global effects, especially in the developing countries of the Indo-Pacific, from Mozambique to East Timor.

More than ever before, the path to sustainable and democratic economic growth in a peaceful and multilateral international order goes through Brussels and New Delhi.