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India and the European Union on Tuesday announced their first-ever Security and Defence Partnership (SDP), marking a significant expansion of bilateral cooperation across maritime security, joint naval exercises, counter-terrorism, cyber and hybrid threats, space security, and defence industry collaboration.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, speaking at Hyderabad House, said the new partnership would help both sides reduce strategic dependencies and build resilience at a time of growing global fragmentation.
“Cooperation is the best answer to today’s global challenges,” she said, underlining that the India–EU partnership is increasingly focused on delivering security for citizens in an “increasingly insecure world”.
Calling the agreement historic, von der Leyen noted that the world’s two largest democracies and major economies had, for the first time, put in place a structured framework for security and defence cooperation. She said Europe and India already shared a long history of collaboration in the defence industry, and the new partnership would strengthen collective resilience against emerging and complex threats.
European Council President António Luís Santos da Costa described the SDP as the first overarching security and defence framework ever established between India and the European Union. He said it would enable both sides to address the full spectrum of threats across the Indo-Pacific, Europe and beyond.
On the Indian side, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh welcomed the deepening of defence ties following his meeting with the EU High Representative and Vice President Kaja Kallas in New Delhi. The discussions covered a wide range of bilateral security and defence issues, with a particular focus on integrating supply chains to build trusted defence ecosystems and future-ready military capabilities.
“Discussed a range of bilateral security and defence issues, including opportunities for integrating supply chains for building trusted defence ecosystems and future-ready capabilities. Looking forward to greater cooperation between India and the EU countries,” Singh said.
Singh also said India’s defence industry could play a meaningful role in the EU’s ‘ReArm Initiative’, as Europe looks to rapidly diversify suppliers and de-risk dependencies. The initiative, also referred to as the ReArm Europe Plan or Readiness 2030, is a 2025 strategic framework aimed at strengthening European defence capabilities and industrial output, with investments of up to €800 billion envisaged by 2030 through joint procurement, faster investments and supply-chain de-risking.
While India and the EU have shared a strategic partnership since 2004, defence cooperation has so far been limited largely to dialogue mechanisms and selective joint activities, rather than formalised arrangements. The new SDP is intended to bridge that gap.
A key operational outcome of the agreement is enhanced maritime coordination. India has accepted the EU’s proposal to station a liaison officer at the Indian Navy’s Information Fusion Centre–Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) in Gurugram, a step aimed at improving information sharing, joint counter-piracy efforts, and threat assessment in the Indian Ocean.
Team BharatShakti
