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Mr Soren Gade is the Member of European Parliament and the Chairman of the European Parliament's EU Delegation for Relations with India
Mr. Soren Gade MEP delivered the first Keynote for our virtual summit on Strengthening business relationship between India and the EU. He spoke about how he had a few primary objectives and ideas on how the European Union and India can develop a closer bond and have more business cooperation in the future on becoming the chairman of the European Parliament's delegation to India. He further went on to mention three points, which according to him are important for creating better cooperation and relationship between India and the European Union. He also believes that such a relationship will also benefit companies around the world who wish to enter and expand into the Indian market.
Firstly, according to him, there is a need to unleash the potential for more trade between India and the European Union and talks about how the EU is India's largest trading partner, but India is only the EU's 10th largest trading partner. Therefore, believes that herein lies a huge potential in India and its markets waiting to be explored. He highlighted that global trade has increased the living standards for all and will still be one of the main drivers of the much-needed growth for all of us. Moreover, according to him, trade between India and European Union will not only benefit the relations between both but will all give the European companies a greater opportunity to enter the Indian market. On this journey, he believes that we must support European SMEs to play an important role in these new trading relations.
Secondly, he believes that it is important to gain a stronger European focus on ‘India as the democratic strategic partner’, as India shares many values with the European Union which makes India seem like a natural partner for the European Union. Therefore, he hopes that the outcome of the summit - meeting in May in Portugal between the European Union and India will lead the leaders both sides to send a clear signal in support of the multilateral system in support of free and fair global trade that will be in support of democracy and human rights.
Thirdly, he spoke on how climate change is a global cross-border problem that requires common international solutions, and he believes that here lays a golden opportunity to promote a partnership with India in the green transition. Europe and India need to work closely to achieve a Climate Neutral economy given that India produces many of the goods that the rest of the world relies on, which naturally has a huge impact on global emissions, along with its sheer size of the population. He spoke about how only collective development of tools needed for the green transition can also boost the economy along with creating jobs. This, according to him is only possible by combining more trade along with encouraging India to see the opportunities in cooperating with companies working to promote and sell green and Climate Neutral solutions.
Mr. Soren Gade gave an example of a Danish wind turbine company - Vestas, who since 2006 has been present in the Indian market and has been playing a key role in the development of wind energy in the region. Vestas saw great opportunities in India on what the manufacturing companies can offer, hence over years, Vestas has increased its investment in the Indian market. Expansion of production in the country with multiple factories led to the employment of more than 3000 employees right now in India. He further spoke about how recently; Vestas has launched a new turbine variant that suits the Indian climate with low wind speed and announced an establishment of a new factory as well as an expansion of an existing factory which will also create more than 1000 new jobs. According to him, several of the European green manufacturing companies should be inspired by Vestas’s business adventure in India as he believes that it is a perfect example that illustrates how we can strengthen trade cooperation and promote the green transition in India at the same time.
He concluded by saying that there is no doubt that both the European Union and India will benefit greatly from stronger cooperation with each other, and he believes that the European Union recognizes these opportunities.
The recordings of this interaction can be viewed from this link https://youtu.be/xkxsnAj8m3c