India, EU collaboration represents aspiration of two billion people: Dr Jitendra Singh

New Delhi: Minister of State in Prime Minister’s Office Dr Jitendra Singh has said, India and European Union(EU) collaboration represents aspiration of two billion people and called for reinforcing the EU-India strategic partnership and developing a shared approach at the multilateral level to address global challenges. Dr. Singh said this during a meeting with an EU delegation led by Ambassador Ugo Astuto.

The Minister expressed happiness that the India-EU Science and Technology Agreement has been renewed recently for a period of five years. Dr Singh said, India-EU must deepen cooperation in the areas including health, agriculture, water, renewable energy, biotechnology and environment. He added that based on the good progress achieved so far, there is a need for advancing the overall India-EU Strategic Partnership through increased efforts on research and innovation. 

He said that the COVID-19 pandemic



has changed the global scenario of the economy and added that science and technology have to play a greater role to address this pandemic by bringing scientists and researchers together.

Dr Singh noted that the European Union has recently launched Horizon Europe which is a planned seven-year European Union scientific research initiative and the EU is approaching Indian scientific agencies for its participation in Horizon Europe. The Minister said, India is willing to participate in this programme provided some of the concerns on issues are addressed at the satisfaction of both the sides.

In his remarks, 

Ambassador Ugo Astuto called for deepening people-to-people contact, apart from focusing on areas including clean energy, genome sequencing, marine protected areas in Antarctica and collaboration on research using high performance computing.