EU and India want to jointly promote 6G and trustworthy AI

In view of transatlantic tensions after Donald Trump took office in Washington, the EU is looking more towards India than the USA. At a ministerial meeting of the EU-India Trade and Technology Council on Friday, both sides defined common guidelines. According to the final communiqué, the EU and India want to work together to accelerate the development of "advanced and trusted digital technologies" such as 6G, artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors and high-performance computing.

Both sides welcome the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Bharat 6G Alliance and the EU 6G Smart Networks and Services Industry Association. The two associations aim to align research and development priorities for the next generation of mobile communications and create more secure and resilient telecommunications and supply chains.

With this agreement, the EU and India not only want to reduce dependencies on the USA in the area of information and communication technologies, but also on China. This should make the subsequent adoption of "Huawei clauses" for the exclusion of individual suppliers from network expansion in the area of critical components, such as 5G, unnecessary for the successor standard.

Specifically, the two partners also agreed to work towards the interoperability of digital public infrastructures in the interests of sovereignty. In the field of AI, the EU office responsible for enforcing the AI Act and the Indian AI mission want to deepen their cooperation in areas such as large language models and "AI for human development and the common good".

Free trade agreement could be in place by the end of 2025

In the sectors of trade, investment and stable value chains, the EU and India agreed to intensify cooperation in strengthening supply chains with a focus on agricultural products, active pharmaceutical ingredients and "clean technologies". In the field of energy, both sides brought start-ups together with potential partners and investors for the recycling of batteries from electric cars.

he Trade and Technology Council also decided to collaborate on research into the production of hydrogen from waste, batteries and plastic waste in the sea with a joint investment volume of around 60 million euros.

As the fifth largest economy in the world, the EU is India's strongest trading partner, with trade in goods worth 124 billion euros in 2023 and an increase of almost 90 percent over the past ten years. Both sides resumed their negotiations on a free trade agreement in 2022 and now want to push ahead with them on a massive scale. The next round is scheduled for March 10-14 in Brussels.

Such a pact would be the "largest of its kind" in the world, emphasized EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in New Delhi. She agreed with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi that it should be achieved by the end of the year. However, there are still some obstacles to be overcome before then. While the EU and India want to reduce tariffs in this way, Trump has just announced new ones for numerous countries including the EU states.

(vbr)