India and Europe do not share a buyer-seller relationship but one of collaboration, says Swedish Ambassador to India Jan Thesleff. In an interview with Divya A, Thesleff talks about what brings India and Europe together in the present geopolitical context, Indo-Swedish joint defence production plans in Jhajjar and the role that the present India can play in the current world scenario. Edited excerpts:
Sweden was part of PM Narendra Modi’s recent four-nation Europe visit. What is your assessment of the 20 hours that PM Modi spent in Sweden?
Personally speaking, that visit is the highlight of my time in India. But more importantly, it’s a highlight when it comes to our relations, which date back more than 75 years. So much has happened, so much is evolving in India, and in my country, for good and for bad in the world. It was really time to have this visit to upgrade our relations to a strategic partnership.
India has many partnerships around the world, but if you look at the partnership that we concluded with India in Gothenburg, it’s among the most comprehensive. There was a need for a closer political dialogue with the changing situation in the world, in our neighbourhood, in your neighbourhood. So there was an urgency.
What are the key deliverables for both sides from PM Modi’s visit?
Now we not only have a strategic partnership, but a joint action plan. And that goes over five pages, and has a timeline. We have agreed what we should achieve, how, and when. And that is very important. For instance, in the economic field, we will double everything we do. But we will also double what we do in terms of exchanges of researchers, in scientific innovation exchange, and in the number of Indians coming to us.
Today, we have 88,000 Indians with us, almost 1% of our population. Indians are the biggest immigrant group in Sweden. And we have set out to double all these exchanges. With the FTA, and the changing dynamics in the world, I am convinced we will achieve that. This will happen before 2030.
An important pillar of India-Sweden ties now is defence cooperation. Rather than a buyer-seller relation, it is about co-pro-duction and joint ventures. What are the tangible outcomes in that zone?
We have moved far beyond that time when we sent goods to one another. Yes, we still send some goods to one another, but it’s much more complicated, involving global supply chains. When I visited an IKEA store in India a few months ago, the blueberry jam stocked there came from Punjab.
When it comes to defence, we are at the forefront in India among foreign countries in defence co-production. As we speak, we are establishing through the Swedish company Saab, a manufacturing plant in Haryana. It is 100% foreign-owned, and will manufacture the Carl-Gustaf rifle. India has been the biggest buyer of these rifles since the 1970s. So the rifles produced by the Swedish company in Jhajjar will cater for the Indian market. And perhaps, beyond that. We will see the first products coming in 2027.
PM Modi’s visit happened at a time when India and Europe are coming together, and have a lot to discuss owing to geopolitical realities. What were the discussions on dealing with global supply chain disruptions?
We are at a point in time where no one is really immune to what happens elsewhere. We have in our neighbourhood, the aggression by Russia on Ukraine going on for four years now. And now we have seen since a little bit more than 100 days, how West Asia is also involved in armed conflict. These things might be far away geographically but they do influence us.
How do you move goods when the seas are no longer open and safe? All this is felt by us, felt by you and felt by the consumers. So a need was felt for a closer coordination, exchange of views, better understanding for the realities of one another.
What also came up in all the meetings is that India, Sweden and Europe are proponents of a rule-based world order. Chaos, disruptions will not serve us. Three words that came up during the visit were complementarity, predictability and trust.
After the India-EU FTA negotiations concluded in January, there have been greater political engagements between India and EU. What is bringing them closer?
India and Europe were already heading in that direction, but political realities have speeded things up. Because of the situation of the past year, the wars, the tariff issues, the supply chain disruptions… The security situation in Europe and in West Asia was on the agenda.
Were there discussions about how and what role India could play because it is talking to all the sides in both wars that you mentioned?
There was definitely a Swedish recognition that India has stepped out on the world stage under the leadership of Prime Minister Modi by hosting big events like G20 and now BRICS. We see an India that is more vocal, more present everywhere. Importantly, India has the credibility of being a democracy. What came out in many of the talks were generally that Europe, EU, Sweden and India are also an alliance of democracies, which is something that binds us together.
You say India is now everywhere. As we saw in the joint statement, Sweden lent its support to UN reform.
Sweden lent its support — not for the first time — to UN reforms and India getting a permanent place on a reformed UNSC. There is a recognition of India’s rightful place on the world stage.
In this time when we are talking of semiconductors and critical minerals, how would the two countries collaborate on that front?
In the joint statement, mining is one of the issues that has been highlighted. Sweden possesses unique mining technologies, which will also help India and others to access rare earth minerals. Sweden is one of the top countries when it comes to mining, and also when it comes to the technologies. So there would be collaborations.
In the present context, what do you think makes India indispensable for Europe?
It’s the complementarity aspect that we spoke about earlier. We are not competing with one another, we actually can complete one another. When it comes to research, cutting-edge technology, more and more European companies, including from Sweden, are moving part of their research and development to India. The mere scale of India gives access to talent that smaller countries cannot offer. Talent is always related to numbers.
