Long neglected as the poor cousin of Asian powerhouse China, India should now be drawn into a strategic partnership with the 25-nation European Union, the bloc's executive Commission said on Wednesday.
"India is changing, dramatically and fast," the Commission said in a paper recommending steps to improve co-operation in areas such as trade, investment and the fight against terrorism.
The EU as a bloc is the leading foreign investor in India and the South Asian nation's biggest trading partner. But total bilateral trade between the EU and India was just 27 billion euros ($32.8 billion) in 2002 compared with the bloc's trade with China of some 116 billion euros ($140.8 billion) in the same year.
"The EU needs to change its vision of India...it is no longer an inward-looking country and it is a more assertive power on the international stage, one that is going through enormous economic changes," an EU official said.
In a signal of the clout both India and China now carry on the world stage, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said last week that leaders from the Group of Eight industrialised nations were considering inviting them into their elite club.
The Commission paper, which will be submitted to EU leaders and will set the agenda for the bloc's October summit with India in the Netherlands, suggests the two sides co-ordinate on major multilateral conventions in the United Nations.
EU officials voiced confidence that the new communist-backed government would pursue economic reform and they welcomed its emphasis on spreading wealth to the countryside, where 70 percent of India's one billion people live.