The India-EU free trade agreement signed on Tuesday (January 27) indicates that New Delhi’s strategic patience is paying off.

Two decades of talks finally bearing fruit. New Delhi and Brussels had relaunched formal negotiations in June 2022. The first rounds were predictable. Familiar arguments about agriculture. Car tariffs. How much market opening was actually acceptable. Both sides dug in on their core interests. Nothing moved.

Then, in May 2025, something shifted. Both sides announced a new timeline. Finish by the end of the year. The announcement sounded routine. It was not.

What had changed was the world around them, and the rules of the game shaped by global volatility and US tariffs – not the negotiators themselves.

Both India and Europe arrived at the same conclusion, roughly at the same time: the rules-based trading system was cracking, and nations that did not build alternatives would be left stranded.

India had an additional motivation. It has maintained a foreign policy centred around strategic autonomy for decades. The basic idea is that alignment with any single power or bloc comes with costs. You keep options open. You do not depend on one partner.

Both sides understood the assignment. Get a deal done. Lock in partnerships. Build alternatives to what used to be the centre of the global........

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