Prime Minister Narendra Modi and French President Emmanuel Macron discussed the global impact of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine crisis in terms of global food and commodities shortages and committed to a coordinated response to address some of these challenges.

The two leaders, who had a one-on-one meeting and also met in the bilateral format in Paris late on Wednesday, held wide-ranging discussions on all key areas of bilateral engagement, including in defence, space, civil nuclear cooperation, bilateral trade and investment and people-to-people linkages, according to an official release by the Ministry of External Affairs. Modi invited Macron to visit India at the earliest opportunity.

Intensifying coordination

“The two leaders discussed the regional and global implications of the conflict in Ukraine and agreed to intensify coordination on the issue. France and India express deep concern about the current aggravation of global food security and nutrition, already impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic, and especially in developing countries,” the joint statement issued following the bilateral meeting stressed.

The two countries are committed to enabling a coordinated, multilateral response to address the risk of aggravated food crisis because of the conflict in Ukraine, including through initiatives such as the Food and Agriculture Resilience Mission (FARM), which aims at ensuring well functioning markets, solidarity and long term resilience, it added.

Connectivity partnership

Modi and Macron also reaffirmed their commitment to deepen India-EU strategic partnership and look forward to closely work together in the implementation of the India-EU connectivity partnership and the decisions made at the India-EU leaders’ meeting in Porto in May 2021.

“They welcomed the recent launch of the India-EU trade and technology council that will foster high level coordination on strategic aspects of trade, technology and security as well as the restart of negotiations on EU-India agreements on trade, investment and geographical Indicators,” the joint statement laid down.

Modi will return to New Delhi on Friday morning after his three-day trip to Europe. He visited Germany, Denmark and France.

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