V4-India Partnership as an Example of Broader EU and Indo-Pacific Region Partnership

The EU has stepped up its efforts to reinforce its presence in Asia, especially in the Indo-Pacific region, due to its increasing geo-strategic importance for the EU, high mutual interconnectedness, as well as trade and investment engagement. In September 2021, the EU adopted its first Indo-Pacific Strategy. The aim of the paper is to point out the development of the partnership between the EU and the Asian (Indo-Pacific) region based on an evaluation of an analysis of trade and investment cooperation between the EU and India with a focus on mutual trade and investment relations between the Visegrad Group countries and India (and point out the comparative advantages that the V4 countries might use to extend mutual trade cooperation). The paper is based on trade analysis and uses the empirical methods of RCA and Grubel-Lloyd indices. There is room for expanding cooperation between the V4 countries and India in deepening intra-industry trade in commodities where the countries have a similar RCA profile. Moreover, the cooperation could complement bilateral relations between both regions. Implications for Central European audience: The paper evaluates V4's competitiveness and assesses V4's export potential (RCA index) with India and potential trade prospects with India (RCA1) to confirm that there is room for expanding trade cooperation between the regions. We consider the V4 countries to be one of the regions that could deepen its mutual relations with India and intensify political dialogue and, therefore, take mutual cooperation and relations to the next level as well as deepen cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region.