New Delhi: A day after UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s visit to New Delhi was cancelled, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scheduled travel to Portugal and France has also been formally axed due to the “COVID-19 situation”.
“In view of the COVID-19 situation, it has been decided, in consultation with the EU and Portuguese leadership, to hold the India-EU Leaders’ Meeting in a virtual format on 8 May 2021,” MEA spokesperson Arindam Bagchi stated on Tuesday.
This effectively means that Indian prime minister will not be travelling to Portugal for the summit. His bilateral visit to France has also been cancelled, as he was supposed to travel to Paris from Porto.
“The India-EU Leaders’ Meeting in the EU+27 format, the first time that such a meeting is being held, reflects the shared ambition of both sides to further deepen the Strategic Partnership,” he said.
The 27 EU leaders who were scheduled to be travelling to Porto for the physical summit would still be congregating at the venue, but the Indian prime minister will be joining virtually from New Delhi.
Among the big deliverables of the India-EU summit is the launch of negotiations of two separate agreements on trade and investment.
Earlier, UK and India announced simultaneously that Prime Minister Johnson’s visit to India next week had been cancelled due to the COVID-19 situation. There will instead be a virtual India-UK summit on April 26.
The Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga was also supposed to visit India in the next few weeks, as per several media reports. There has been no public announcement of the visit, so it is not clear if it will be formally called off.