India-EU joint statement treats climate as a courtesy

Climate is acknowledged, but detached from the economic choices that will shape long-term outcomes

Joint statements are worth reading not only for what they promise, but for what they choose not to say. The India–EU Joint Statement from the 16th India–EU Summit, held in New Delhi from January 25 to 27, during the visit of European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, is a case in point.

Economic co-operation occupies a central place in the statement, with renewed emphasis on the long-pending India-EU Free Trade Agreement, the headline takeaway of the joint statement. However, it is interesting to note how climate change is acknowledged, treated with due seriousness, and placed within the architecture of co-operation. Yet, it is still peripheral, even as it is carefully framed, diplomatically contained, and detached from the economic decisions that will shape outcomes.

Climate appears as one item among many alongside trade, security, connectivity, technology, and strategic co-operation, rather than as the context within which all of these must now operate. It is treated as an area for dialogue, not as a constraint that reshapes choices. The result is a familiar pattern where existing priorities continue largely unchanged, with climate added on rather than built in.

The statement reaffirms commitment to the Paris Agreement and references the 1.5°C temperature goal. It recognises equity and common but differentiated responsibilities, principles central to India’s long-standing climate position. These affirmations matter, particularly at a time when global climate co-operation is under visible strain. But affirmation is not direction. In a decade scientists have repeatedly described as decisive, the absence of near-term milestones or clearly articulated transition pathways limits the practical meaning of such commitments.

Growth and market access are presented as shared goals. Yet there is little examination of how expanded trade, industrial activity, and infrastructure development will interact with climate goals. Even environmental safeguards are mentioned in broad terms, without clarity on how they will be embedded in trade frameworks, operationalised across sectors, or assessed over time.

The scale of the India-EU Free Trade Agreement is substantial, the European Commission has described it as the largest agreement ever concluded by either side, projecting a doubling of EU goods exports to India by 2032, and annual duty savings of around €4 billion. Tariffs are set to be eliminated or reduced on the majority of EU goods exports, while the EU will liberalise most imports from India. These are not marginal adjustments, but changes that will influence production patterns and material flows for decades.

Several sectoral provisions sharpen the climate implications. India has agreed to phased tariff reductions on vehicles, steel, machinery, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals, while the EU will open quotas for automobiles and provide duty-free access for significant volumes of steel. At the same time, the agreement leaves out chapters on energy, raw materials, and manufacturing investment, and relies on consultation rather than enforceable provisions in its sustainability chapter. This imbalance, the deep market opening without clear climate guardrails, makes the limited treatment of climate alignment in the joint statement more striking.

For India, this matters because trade agreements shape patterns of production, energy use, and resource extraction long after the ink dries. When climate considerations are not integrated early and explicitly, they tend to remain secondary. At a time when climate impacts are already affecting agriculture, water availability and urban systems, alignment between economic policy and climate objectives is not an abstract concern. It is a practical necessity.

This becomes increasingly relevant as the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism (CBAM) begins to shape market access for certain goods, making co-operation on industrial transition and measurement an emerging reality. The EU, for now, has pledged to treat no other trade partner better than India when it comes to the CBAM, and additionally pledged €500 million over the next two years to help India to ‘accelerate its long-term sustainable industrial transformation’.

Adaptation itself is addressed largely through technical lenses, i.e., disaster risk management, water co-operation, and resilience-building. These are critical areas of work, but adaptation is not only technical, but it also involves livelihoods, land use, social protection, and difficult political choices about who is protected, where investments flow, and how risks are shared. Treating adaptation primarily as a technical challenge underplays its social and distributional dimensions.

The most consequential weakness of the joint statement is the absence of accountability. There are no timelines, benchmarks, or review mechanisms against which progress can be assessed. Co-operation without accountability has become a familiar feature of climate diplomacy. It creates the appearance of movement while allowing underlying trajectories to remain largely unchanged.

The two sides will sign a memorandum of understanding to establish a platform for co-operation and support on climate action in the first half of this year. The India-EU partnership has the potential to contribute meaningfully to global climate efforts. Together, the two sides bring economic weight, technological capacity, and political influence.

Realising that potential will require more than careful affirmations and well-crafted language. It will require clearer alignment between growth and climate objectives, attention to who bears the costs of transition and disruption, and mechanisms that translate intent into measurable change.

Shailendra Yashwant is a researcher covering forests, wildlife and the environmental politics shaping conservation and land use in South Asia. X: @shaibaba.

(The writer is a journalist and author of Narendra Modi: The Man, The Times and The RSS: Icons of the Indian Right)