The India-Nordic Summit format and the signing of Strategic Green Partnerships between India and the Scandinavian states are examples of how the Nordic nations are attempting to build their own, distinct way of deepening ties with India. Poland and other Central-Eastern European countries should consider following such examples. With India’s engagement with the EU growing and an India-EU trade agreement being on the cards, it is time for the Central-Eastern European countries to make their moves: to enhance Track-1 engagement with New Delhi and come up with sector-specific offers of cooperation with India.
A ‘Green Strategic Partnership’ is an attempt to give a more specific shape to a rather vague format. Strategic partnerships are a formula which, arguably, has become less significant in international relations as the number of agreements pertaining to those has grown. Originally, a strategic partnership would indicate which two countries consider their ties of particular importance to their long-term goals. As their numbers grew, India’s strategic partnership agreements began to simply signalise the intention to cooperate on a bilateral basis – an agreement often signed without any specific indicators that would explain why one country’s cooperation with another one would be more significant than collaboration with other ones. For instance, India signed strategic partnerships agreements with Mongolia (2015) and with Poland (2024). However, it still remains unclear why relations with Poland would be of any particular significance to India, as compared to cooperation with other European countries. Neither is the same clear when one considers Poland’s relations with various Asian nations. The signing of the agreement was not accompanied by any large-scale economic deals that would provide a measuring rod for the significance of this cooperation.
It would seem that Denmark found itself a different approach to the issue of strategic partnership with India. As a small state, and a one which is arguably not a priority from New Delhi’s perspective, Denmark probably needed to find a way to make itself more visible in the perception of Indian decision-makers. Instead of a general strategic partnership, Copenhagen signed a Green Strategic Partnership with New Delhi in 2020. Thus, instead of a general promise of enhanced cooperation, Denmark and India promised each other to collaborate in a more specific domain – ecology – and a one that seems feasible from both perspectives (with India being in need of new solutions and Denmark being potentially capable of delivering them). As part of this, the parties intend to work on implementing green fuel in ships. (Text update: in 2026, Norway and India decided to sign a Green Strategic Partnership as well).
While such semantic framing obviously does not decide whether a specific project will succeed or fail, the whole idea of a partnership may help Denmark gain recognition in India, and thus potentially present more opportunities to Danish companies on the Indian market. In other words, it is a way forward for Denmark to build itself a certain image in India. In business and politics, such an image of a nation is of importance too – Japan is one instance of a country that has succeeded in establishing a strong image of a reliable, technologically advanced, stable, and peaceful economic power, an image that is certainly immediately recognisable in countries like India. Poland arguably avails of no such image in Asia. Moreover, being a relatively small and not a very advanced economy, Poland may not hope, as of now, to build a wide and powerful image of itself akin to that of Japan. Thus, following Denmark’s example, Poland should strive to build what could be termed a sectoral image: the perception that a country specialises in a particularly promising domain of economy or technological change. The other countries of Central-Eastern Europe should consider adopting this approach too.
The Scandinavian states’ decision to establish an India-Nordic Summit is worth following as well. It must have been assumed that a single Nordic state, particularly if it’s Denmark, Finland or Iceland, may not hope to establish as deep and important ties with India as the ones that New Delhi shares with, say, Washington or Moscow. For India, most of Europe, barring countries like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, is still of relatively little importance. Germany remains India’s largest trading partner in Europe, while France has become India’s most important defence partner amongst European states, but the other nations of the Old Continent are far away from a similar status from New Delhi’s perspective.
Thus, the Nordic states must have decided that the way to approach is through a regional format. Perhaps New Delhi would not be that interested in holding annual summits with, say, only Denmark or Finland (although this may not be the case for Sweden with its offer of military products to India). Thus, in 2018, the parties established the India-Nordic Summit. Since then, it serves as a platform for Track 1 diplomacy between India and all five nations of the region: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. Its one weakness, arguably, is that the meetings are not that frequent. So far, the summit has been held every four years. Still, this is more than the region of Central-Eastern Europe avails of in its relations with India.
India does not hold regular Track 1 meetings with any CEE country – neither is there a recurrent Track 1 summit between the whole region and India. A single country, such as Poland or Czechia, may find it rather difficult to convince New Delhi to establish a format of bilateral summits; this may prove even more challenging for Baltic states acting separately of each other. Thus, one regional format that could be proposed would be a V4-India Summit. Alternatively, a much larger format, involving the Baltic states, Ukraine, and perhaps even a part of the Balkan nations could be suggested. This would perhaps make such a regional format more similar in its geographic scope to China’s 16+1 (now 14+1) but, hopefully, it would not share the fate of the PRC’s now-moribund formula. With India’s engagement with the EU growing and an India-EU trade agreement being on the cards, it is time for the Central-Eastern European countries to make their moves: to enhance Track-1 engagement with New Delhi and come up with sector-specific offers of cooperation with India.
