E.U. to adopt a more pragmatic approach in talks with India and others: E.U. top diplomat

EU's foreign policy shift towards pragmatism and mutual benefit in dialogue with India, focusing on transactionalism and partnerships.

The EU’s top foreign policy and security official, Kaja Kallas, has indicated a shift in the bloc’s dialogue postures, with a greater emphasis on pragmatism, transactionalism and mutual benefit in its approach. Ms Kallas indicated this would inform Brussels’s discussions with New Delhi later this month when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the College of Commissioners will visit India.

“The majority of countries are reluctant to make a choice between autocracies opposing the West and the West itself. It was the same during the Cold War,” Ms Kallas said during her opening address at a conference of EU ambassadors in Brussels on Monday (February 3, 2025).

Countries were guided by their self-interest and “not by whether they are allies of the EU, the US, China or Russia” , she said.

“This is true across the world, look at Türkiye and the Gulf States in peace mediation roles with their own strategic agendas and transactional approaches,” said Ms Kallas.

“The question is whether the EU should become transactional too. In many ways it is time we should,” she added.

The remarks come two weeks after U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to the White House and hours after he threatened to slap tariffs onto the bloc’s exports to America.

Ms Kallas called for the E.U. to have more “mutually beneficial” projects with partners, citing the recent trade deals with Mexico and ‘Mercusor’ (a group comprising Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay) as pragmatic and logical.