He said France is currently President of the EU Council and is playing a leadership role in steering Europe through the current crisis while also strengthening Europe’s focus on the Indo-Pacific. “In this context, we appreciate the French initiative of organising the EU Ministerial Forum for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific last month,” he said.

This was a unique opportunity for countries of the European Union and the Indo-Pacific to chart out a common vision and strategy for cooperation. “We also hope to see the resumption of negotiations of the India-EU FTA under the French Presidency of the EU Council,” he said.

The deliberations on the theme of ‘Innovation, Sustainability and Multilateral Cooperation’ come at an opportune moment when India and France are taking rapid strides in key traditional and non-traditional strategic areas.

The first of these is digital and cybersecurity. In August 2019, India and France adopted a Roadmap on Cybersecurity and Digital Technology, which lays down our common vision for cooperation in a domain which we see as foundational for the 21st century. We have a robust cyber dialogue where we discuss bilateral and multilateral cooperation on digital and cyber issues. On practical aspects too, we have excellent cooperation as can be seen in the successful development of India’s fastest supercomputer “Param-Siddhi-AI” under the National Supercomputing Mission (NSM) by India’s Centre for Development of Advanced Computing or C-DAC and the French company Atos. There is also an increasing realisation that the 5G networks that are coming up in the two countries have to be safe and secure. Both India and France are committed to finding solutions to risks associated with 5G technology.