Europe set to engage emerging-market giants

THE new European Commission is celebrating this week its first 100 days in office with key achievements, including a new industrial strategy to underpin its digital and geo-economic ambitions. Yet it is on the foreign policy front that Brussels has put perhaps most effort with its goal to begin making Europe stronger in the world, post-Brexit.

One of the key focal points for this agenda has so far been engaging in areas from trade disputes with the United States through to climate change diplomacy, five years after the Paris treaty, as Europe seeks to become the world's first climate-neutral continent by 2050 and promote its Green New Deal. However, it is specifically in relation to emerging markets across the world, from India to China and Africa, where this more prominent European international policy stance may be taking most root.

This Friday, for instance, Brussels was scheduled to host the EU-India Summit with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but this was postponed because of the novel coronavirus outbreak. The EU (at just under 450 million in population), which is India's biggest trading partner, wants to turbo-charge ties, including agreeing to a new trade deal with the approximately 1.3 billion population emerging-markets giant.