Polish PM Donald Tusk lands in Delhi. (Photo: MEA)
New Delhi: The Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, begins a three-day visit to India on Wednesday. It is his first trip to the country since returning to office and only his second as head of government.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said he is coming at the invitation of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, and that his previous visit was in 2010, during his earlier tenure.
Tusk will hold bilateral talks with Modi in New Delhi on October 22 and meet business leaders in Bengaluru. He will be accompanied by Poland’s finance and economy minister, Andrzej Domański and a large business delegation.
India-Poland business forums are scheduled in New Delhi on October 22 and in Bengaluru on October 23.
Agenda
The MEA said the two leaders would review the full range of bilateral relations, which were raised to a strategic partnership during Modi's visit to Poland in August 2024.
They will also exchange views on regional and global developments. The ministry listed trade and investment, defence, emerging technologies, renewable energy, education, culture and people-to-people ties as areas for cooperation. Tusk is also expected to meet people from India’s information technology and space sectors.
Defence is likely to feature prominently. Earlier this month, Domański said defence cooperation and industrial collaboration would be at the forefront of ties, and that Polish defence companies would be brought to India during the visit.
Poland, a Nato member bordering Ukraine, has been expanding its armed forces and looking for industrial partners. India, for its part, is pushing to widen its defence exports and manufacturing base.
The MEA also said the visit would strengthen the India-European Union strategic partnership, a reminder that Warsaw is a significant voice in Brussels.
Background
Modi’s August 2024 trip to Warsaw was the first by an Indian prime minister to Poland in 45 years, and it coincided with 70 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Poland became India’s 10th strategic partner in Europe and the eighth in the European Union. Modi also announced a youth exchange programme under which 20 young Poles would be invited to India each year.
Ukraine was a major theme of that visit, as Modi travelled on to Kyiv. Tusk said he was glad Modi had confirmed his readiness to engage personally in bringing about a peaceful, just and speedy end to the war.
Modi said India’s view was that this is “not the era of war”. Moscow remains a long-standing defence supplier to India, and Delhi’s balancing of ties with Russia and Europe is likely to shape how far defence cooperation with Warsaw can go.
Trade remains modest
Commercial ties have grown but are small relative to the size of the two economies. Embassy of India figures cited at the time showed bilateral trade rising from $1.95 billion to $5.72 billion between 2013 and 2023, with India’s exports making up most of it.
A Polish think tank put 2023 trade at $5.6 billion, which made Poland only India’s 46th trading partner. That gap explains the large business delegation and the two forums.
Diplomatic contacts have continued in the run-up to the visit. The external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, called on the Polish president, Karol Nawrocki, in Warsaw and discussed the trajectory of the strategic partnership.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are the author’s own and don’t necessarily reflect the views of India Sentinels.
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