The conclusion of negotiations on the India-European Union Free Trade Agreement (FTA) on 27 January 2026 marked an important milestone in the bilateral relationship. Yet beyond trade and market access, a more consequential dimension of the partnership is taking shape. Digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductor technologies and research cooperation are becoming central to how India and the EU understand their economic and strategic interests. The challenge now is to move beyond institutional commitments and develop a partnership capable of delivering tangible technological and regulatory outcomes.
The India-EU Trade and Technology Council (TTC) provides an institutional foundation for this transition. Its evolving agenda reflects a shared recognition that technological capabilities, digital governance and economic security can no longer be addressed separately. Both partners must navigate different governance frameworks, technological dependencies and institutional priorities. Nevertheless, the success of digital cooperation and AI cooperation will depend on whether common objectives can be translated into interoperable systems, shared research capabilities, credible regulatory safeguards and measurable institutional commitments.
Two tracks, one strategic partnership
The TTC’s first ministerial meeting in Brussels on 16 May 2023 placed Working Group 1- Strategic Technologies, Digital Governance and Digital Connectivity at the centre of cooperation on quantum technologies, high-performance computing (HPC), trustworthy AI and semiconductors. It linked research on climate change, natural disasters and personalised medicine with digital skills, talent exchange, 5G, telecommunications and Internet of Things standards. It also envisaged interoperable, secure and privacy-preserving digital public infrastructure (DPI), including solutions useful to developing countries.
At the second TTC meeting in New Delhi on 28 February 2025, these priorities gained more specific institutional form. Both partners sought DPI interoperability, mutual recognition of electronic signatures and joint approaches to human-centric digital transformation. Semiconductor work expanded to chip design, heterogeneous integration, sustainable processes, supply-chain resilience and talent development. The European AI Office and IndiaAI Mission agreed to deepen exchanges on large language models (LLMs), trustworthy AI and tools for ethical and responsible AI. An agreement between the Bharat 6G Alliance and its European industry counterpart aligned research priorities, while work on skills, certification, mobility and multistakeholder internet governance continued. The GANANA project makes this development more tangible. With nearly €5 million in EU funding through EuroHPC JU under Horizon Europe and separately financed Indian participation, the project seeks a long-term research partnership in HPC applications and joint capacity building for AI. Its work on natural hazards, climate change and bioinformatics shows how a declared priority can become an organised research activity.
The third TTC meeting in Brussels on 15 July 2026 narrowed some ambitions into identifiable next steps. Building on the January 2026 arrangement on advanced electronic signatures and seals, the partners proposed technical work on mutual recognition and a possible pilot linking the EU Digital Identity Wallet and India’s DigiLocker, including business-wallet applications. They agreed to explore a Joint AI Roadmap, to exchange best practices on AI adoption and governance, to continue cooperation in HPC and quantum technologies, and to support the mobility of skilled ICT workers, and intensify coordination on next generation telecom and 6G standardisation The third meeting also proposed semiconductor collaboration between Indian design facilities and EU Chips Act pilot lines, including access to advanced Process Design Kits (PDKs) and silicon prototyping. It discussed investments, advanced manufacturing, materials, critical minerals, skilled ICT mobility, digital-skills collaboration, 6G standards and data governance. The partners also agreed to begin negotiations on India’s association with Horizon Europe.
The distinction between the two tracks is more than semantic, because each addresses a different kind of problem. Digital cooperation asks whether systems, credentials and standards can function across borders, while AI cooperation asks who has the compute to build a system, how it can be tested and who can inspect it when risks arise. The tracks nonetheless intersect in data, infrastructure and trust, and what binds them is a shared interest in secure, trustworthy systems that both partners can rely on. The EU and India should therefore seek convergence in policy objectives while retaining flexibility in instrument design across digital and AI cooperation.
Two systems, different architectures
The EU brings common legislation, research programmes and pooled infrastructure, but remains a union of 27 member states implementing shared rules through different institutions. The 2026 State of the Digital Decade package records major investment commitments while identifying persistent gaps in computing, cybersecurity, semiconductors and skills. The European Digital Identity Wallet illustrates the promise and difficulty of interoperability, as a common technical framework still requires national implementation. Likewise, EuroHPC pools capacity without removing dependence on globally sourced hardware.
On the other hand, India’s IndiaAI Mission, approved in March 2024 with an allocation of ₹10,371.92 crore, seeks to widen access to computing, support indigenous models and build research capability. Its 2025 AI Governance Guidelines favour a principle-based approach using existing legal and institutional mechanisms, whereas the EU AI Act imposes binding obligations on specified systems and general-purpose models through a phased timetable. The difference should not be reduced to European regulation set against Indian innovation, since both pursue capability and safety through different legal arrangements.
Because the EU and India pursue similar goals through different legal arrangements, partnership design cannot depend on regulatory alignment alone. The two sides need not adopt identical AI laws to collaborate, but they do need common technical expectations wherever research, evaluation or deployment crosses jurisdictions. Shared terminology on risk, usable documentation and interoperable testing methods may therefore prove more immediately productive than ambitious declarations of regulatory convergence. The practical question is which of these technical foundations can be developed first, and through which existing channels of cooperation.
Where cooperation meets its limits
Three limits stand out, each of which shapes how far the ambitions of the Trade and Technology Council can be translated into practice. The first limit is regulatory divergence, since a system jointly researched in India and Europe may face different compliance duties, responsibilities and evidence requirements on each side, which means that the proposed Joint AI Roadmap should begin with a narrow set of applications and specify what counts as an adequate evaluation rather than presume that a single assessment will satisfy both jurisdictions.
The second concerns data and auditability, since the legal arrangements that govern cross-border information flows and regulatory access determine how far joint AI work can be monitored and verified. India does not currently hold an EU adequacy decision, so transfers of personal data must rely on an alternative legal mechanism such as standard contractual clauses. The published text of the negotiated FTA’s digital trade chapter leaves each party’s rules on cross-border data transfers intact and restricts compulsory source-code disclosure, but it nevertheless preserves the power of regulators and conformity assessment bodies to require access for investigation and enforcement. Because these provisions refer expressly to source code, whereas model evaluation, logs and training-data documentation are distinct instruments serving different audit purposes, the partners should clarify what information their regulators may lawfully request before asserting that trade disciplines either prevent or guarantee effective AI audits.
The third concerns capacity and delivery, because even a well-designed framework for cooperation depends on the physical and financial resources required to implement it. Advanced chips and computing power remain tied to globally distributed supply chains, a vulnerability that the European Chips Act seeks to reduce, and joint projects therefore need agreed access conditions, financing arrangements and safeguards for intellectual property and security. The GANANA project offers a concrete foundation, whereas the digital wallet pilot and the semiconductor design cooperation proposed at the third TTC meeting still require technical assessment. Without clearly assigned owners, budgets and milestones, the TTC risks accumulating commitments faster than it delivers outcomes.
Nevertheless, these limits do not weaken the case for the partnership but define the conditions on which its success depends, namely regulatory clarity, trusted arrangements for data and auditability, and the institutional capacity to deliver.
The road ahead
The three TTC meetings reveal a partnership moving from an expansive technology agenda towards more focused institutional cooperation. The proposed pilot linking the EU Digital Identity Wallet with India’s DigiLocker, the discussions on a Joint AI Roadmap, the GANANA project and the prospective semiconductor research links advanced at the third meeting in July 2026 are promising for different reasons, since the first tests interoperability, the second could help to coordinate AI governance, and the remaining two aim to build practical research capability.
The next test is whether the two sides can turn these openings into functioning systems, transparent evaluation arrangements and sustained collaboration. India can seek greater research capacity while preserving regulatory space, and the EU can strengthen its international research links while learning from India’s experience with population-scale DPI. Both will benefit only if interdependence becomes a shared capability rather than a new source of vulnerability, and the partnership’s success will therefore be measured less by the number of declarations issued than by what its institutions enable businesses, researchers and citizens to use.