Luxembourg, Jan 7 (PTI) External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said he can “fairly confidently” predict that 2026 will see an upswing in India's ties with Europe and Luxembourg can give the support to ramp up New Delhi's relationship with the European Union.

Highlighting that there is a fair amount of volatility and unpredictability in the world, and every country, every region, is reassessing its interests and calculations, Jaishankar said, countries are saying “it's not enough to de-risk. Maybe we should be building closer friendships and deeper partnerships.” “So are there other particular countries, particular relationships that we can trust more than others? And I think that common sense is today, bringing India and the European Union much closer,” Jaishankar said during his interaction with the Indian community here.

“So I can fairly confidently predict that 2026 will see an upswing in ties with Europe. You will see, certainly, I can speak for the Indian end of that, you will see a much greater investment of time and energy and attention on our part where Europe is concerned,” he said.

Jaishankar, who is on a six-day visit to France and Luxembourg, shared the video of his interaction with the Indian community on Tuesday on X and also said in another post: “Glad to interact with members of the Indian community in Luxembourg today. Underlined the significant deepening of our partnership with Luxembourg across political, business and technology domains.” “Appreciate the contributions of our diaspora in deepening India - Luxembourg ties,” said Jaishankar during his first visit to Luxembourg.

Earlier in the morning, Jaishankar met Prime Minister Luc Frieden, had a long, detailed discussion with Foreign Minister Javier Bethel, and called on Guillaume V, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg. “It's really been a very, very productive and a very satisfying day,” he said.

The minister started his speech during the interaction by saying that at all his meetings in Luxembourg, “I heard very strong and very effusive words of praise for the Indian community.” Talking about India's relationship with Luzembourge, Jaishankar said, “At a time when we are seeking to ramp up that relationship with the European Union (EU), the support that Luxembourg can give us, the influence that it will have over ... the collective decision making in Brussels is really quite significant, and I was given really the fullest assurance that, we are right now in a very advanced stage of negotiating a free trade agreement.” Drawing attention to how India was doing “very much more and very much differently than before,” the minister said, a lot of discussions, therefore, “were about how the digital infrastructure was working in India, how the space industry has taken off.” “We, of course, have very high respect for Luxembourg's own satellite, long standing satellite capacities, but they were obviously also tracking us in that domain, and there were a lot of questions and interest shown in that regard,” he said.

Answering a question about the Free Trade Agreement vis-a-vis agricultural produce and family businesses, he said, “Tariffs are only one part of the issue. Often we get into very complicated issues of standards. You know, particularly you mentioned rice, there being some debates in regard to residues and so on.” “Sometimes the paperwork involved, the number of things you have to do are very cumbersome. Sometimes, tariff is a barrier, but these rules and regulations are another wall which you have to overcome,” he said, adding, such deals take a long time “precisely because of all these complexities that we have to go through, the details, we have to look at products which we export, then go through the experience, okay, what has been the experience in the last 10, 15 20 years.” “As an economy, as a country, today, we have become far, far more committed to pushing our products out in the world. In fact, for all the tariff volatility of this year, actually, our exports have done quite well, much better than people expected.

“In the last few years, we've done a number of free trade agreements. Just last month, we signed one with Oman. We finalized one with New Zealand,” he said, but also pointed out that some of them may not be that big, “but believe me, every bit adds something, some set of exporters get new opportunities with every new trade agreement.” Thanking the Indian community, he said he is proud of the image and reputation that they have built in Luxembourg and urged the members to build on that further to support India as it seeks to take the bilateral relationship to a higher level. “Maybe, you have words of advice to give me as well,” he said, sending peels of laughter. PTI NPK NPK NPK