Decentring EU foreign policy via external perceptions? Challenges and opportunities in India-EU relations

Mutual perceptions are a key challenge in India-EU relations. In an effort to undercover miscommunication and misperceptions between India and the EU and to unveil underlying tensions between them that may impact the effectiveness of their cooperation efforts, the paper will be in three parts. Part one will focus on Indian perceptions of the EU and the self-reflection of India in relation to the EU. It will critically consider the evolution of Indian perceptions of the EU as model of regionalism, as an economic, political, security, development, educational and cultural actor, as well as its role in human rights, international law, democracy, the environment, climate change, science and technology. This part will also briefly consider India’s self-visions mostly in relation to the EU’s perceptions and misperceptions of India. Part two will look at the perceptions of India by EU officials in Brussels and at the Delegation of the European Union to India and Bhutan as well as their self-perceptions of the EU in relation to India. Building on part one and two, part three will consider some of the reasons for the visibility and, in some cases, the near invisibility of the EU in India in specific fields and how this has changed over time. The study will combine the results of several studies conducted over the period of 2010-2024.