India-Italy Joint Strategic Action Plan 2025-29

Syllabus: GS2/IR

Context

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Italian counterpart unveiled the Joint Strategic Action Plan 2025-29 as they met on the sidelines of the G20 Summit.

Key Highlights of the Plan

• It is a five-year strategic action plan outlining their vision for collaboration in a range of key sectors.
• Defence: 
  • Holding Joint Defence Consultative meetings, Joint Staff Talks on a yearly basis.
  • Interactions in the framework of Italy’s growing interest in Indo-Pacific region, aimed at increasing interoperability and cooperation.
  • Enhanced partnerships among public and private stakeholders on technology collaboration.
  • Negotiate a Defence Industrial Roadmap between the two Nations.
• Economic: 
  • Leverage the work of the Joint Commission for Economic Cooperation and of the Italy-India Joint Working Group on Food Processing, to increase bilateral trade.
  • Promote industrial partnerships, technological centres and mutual investment, also in automotive, semiconductors, infrastructure and advanced manufacturing.
• Connectivity: Enhancing collaboration in maritime and land infrastructure also in the framework of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.
• Science & Innovation: Expanding cooperation on critical and emerging technologies, forging technology value chain partnerships in both countries in sectors such as telecom, artificial intelligence, and digitalization of services.
• Space: Expanding cooperation between the Italian Space Agency and ISRO to include projects of common interest in Earth observation, heliophysics and space exploration with emphasis on lunar science.
• Energy Transition: Strengthen the Global Biofuels Alliance and International Solar Alliance.
• Migration and Mobility:
  • Promote legal migration channels, as well as fair and transparent labour training and recruitment procedures. 
  • A pilot will cover training of health professionals in India and their subsequent employment in Italy.

India-Italy Strategic Partnership

• Diplomatic relations and Strategic : India and Italy, both ancient civilizations with rich cultural heritage, established diplomatic relations in 1947.
  • India and Italy elevated their Relations into Strategic Partnership in 2023.
• Indo-Pacific Region: Italy is the next country in Europe after France, Germany and The Netherlands, to be taking a keen interest in engagements in the Indo-Pacific region.
  • The gradual upswing in its ties with India is an important part of its recent Indo-Pacific pivot. 
• In 2021, the ‘India-Italy-Japan’ trilateral was launched, with an aim to work towards the security, stability, prosperity and multilateralism of the Indo-Pacific region.
  • It is the second trilateral that India has, in the Indo-Pacific region, involving a European country, after the ‘India-France-Australia’ trilateral.
• Global Forums: Italy joined both the significant initiatives, launched on the margins of the G20 Summit, the ‘Global Biofuel Alliance’ and the ‘India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor’. 
  • Italy has also joined the ‘International Solar Alliance’ (ISA), in 2021, which was the year of the Italian Presidency of G20 and co-Presidency of COP26.
• Economic  : Italy is India’s 4th largest trading partner in the EU, with bilateral trade reaching $14.253 billion in 2022-23, including $8.691 billion in Indian exports. Italy ranks 17th for FDI inflows into India between April 2000 and March 2023,
  • Key sectors attracting FDI include automobiles (29.8%), trading (17.1%), industrial machinery (5.6%), services (5.1%), and electrical equipment (4.6%).
• The two countries are looking forward to strengthening cooperation in defence technology, maritime security and space, with similar concerns in the maritime domain.
• Relations with China: There is Italy’s growing concern about China in the broader European and Indo-Pacific region.
  • Italy has also withdrawn from the China’s Belt and Road Initiative, showing a significant policy shift. 
  • Geopolitical necessities are resulting in Italian policy makers, shaping and reshaping their relationships in Asia. 
• Future outlook : Recent developments show that there is a renewed interest in the relationship from both sides.
  • India and Italy can leverage their strategic positions in the Indian Ocean and in the Mediterranean, respectively, to promote connectivity, stability, energy security, freedom of navigation in the two maritime geographies, and therefore in the wider Indo-Pacific region.

Source: PIB