India's Quiet Bet on Central Europe: The Arithmetic of Absence

Thirty years is a long time to have a relationship without showing up. Despite the absence of a prime ministerial visit between 1993 and 2026, India and Slovakia consistently strengthened their diplomatic, defense, and economic partnership. The lack of a high-level visit did not diminish the importance either country attached to the relationship, which continued to grow through sustained engagement across multiple sectors. Modi came to Bratislava in June, and commentaries soon appeared, most focused on what the visit meant. But the more important question is what the silence costs.

Illustration by The Geostrata

THE OLD MAP OF INDIA'S EUROPE STRATEGY

The way India's European strategy used to work until recently, three cities were key to it. London for the post-colonial past. Paris for strategic autonomy and the Rafale. Berlin for the industrial heft and economic weight of the EU. Brussels was the systemic counterpart to the other three. The India-EU Free Trade Agreement, negotiated from 2007 and finalized in January 2026, took nineteen years and five Indian governments to conclude.

The extended timeline was shaped by shifting geopolitical priorities, the complexity of negotiations on both sides, and the European Union's consensus-based decision-making process involving twenty-seven member states, regulatory harmonization, and a strong emphasis on legal precision over strategic timing. Engagement with parts of Western Europe often included discussions on issues such as democracy, press freedom, and minority rights alongside broader strategic cooperation.

While these concerns reflected values that many European governments considered important, Indian policymakers increasingly viewed their application as inconsistent, noting that the EU maintained close strategic partnerships with several countries where similar issues received comparatively less emphasis. This perception contributed to a sense of asymmetry in the relationship. Against this backdrop, India, particularly under External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, sought to diversify its engagement by strengthening ties with Central European partners, where cooperation was seen as more focused on shared strategic and economic interests.

TURNING TO CENTRAL EUROPE

Central Europe is different in this aspect. Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia are countries that spent decades being told by larger powers how to govern themselves and came to some conclusions. Those countries are pragmatic in a way that Western European countries, protected for decades by their position of normative power, do not have to be. When Modi and Robert Fico went aboard a ship on the Danube River during his visit to Slovakia, the informality of the meeting was precisely the point. No frameworks, no conditions, two governments trying to see what they can do for each other.

POLAND: THE SECURITY ANCHOR

Poland is the security anchor. With its defence spending at 4.7% of GDP, it spends the largest proportion on its military forces in NATO. A figure that reflects geography rather than ambition. Poland has seen Ukraine fight off an attack using drones, electronic warfare, and deliberate targeting of infrastructure and has learnt lessons from which it has overhauled its entire defence procurement process. Poland is modernizing its Soviet-era weaponry alongside NATO systems, much like India's challenge of upgrading its Russian arsenal.

Western suppliers offer pathways, but each comes with constraints on platforms, approvals, or end use. Having gone through a similar transition, Poland offers India industrial cooperation grounded in practical experience. The strategic partnership signed in August 2024 and the five-year action plan through 2028 provide the framework. The actual work lies in the defence working groups below the ministerial level.

 THE CZECH REPUBLIC: THE QUIET NODE

The Czech Republic is the least visible node and possibly the most important over a ten-year horizon. Consider Jiri Srom, who led the Czech trade delegation to India in 2024 and spoke of Czech firms' frustration at being categorized as minor European partners when their industrial footprint in India in transport, energy, and metallurgy (Tatra Trucks, Skoda, and Bonatrans among them) predates most of India's formal strategic partnerships with larger European states. The 2024 Strategic Partnership on Innovation extended that existing relationship into AI, big data, space systems, and cybersecurity.

What Prague brings that neither Warsaw nor Bratislava fully provides is precision engineering combined with EU regulatory familiarity. An understanding of how to manufacture to European standards and navigate the single market's compliance architecture from the inside. For Indian firms trying to enter European supply chains as producers rather than component exporters, that combination is worth more than the current trade statistics suggest.

SLOVAKIA: THE UNDERESTIMATED PARTNER

Slovakia is the most underestimated node. It produces more automobiles per capita than any other country in the world, a consequence of hosting major European production facilities relative to a population of 5.4 million. For India, the relevant question is not simply where to sell but where to learn. Slovakia has built the workforce, the supplier ecosystems, and the logistics infrastructure that advanced manufacturing requires.

Bilateral trade crossed one billion dollars in 2024 and doubled over three years. The defence relationship predates the current diplomatic opening. Slovakia has supplied military equipment to India since the 1990s and the June 2026 Defence Cooperation Letter of Intent formalises a shift from supplier-client toward co-development and co-production, precisely the model that Atmanirbhar Bharat requires from its foreign partnerships.

THE SPACE LEFT BY CHINA

The 17+1 format was initiated by Beijing in Central and Eastern Europe in 2012. In 2023, it had shrunk to 14+1. Infrastructure promises have under-delivered. Financing terms have been less favorable than promised. And the Ukraine invasion, which Beijing did not condemn while furthering its partnership with Moscow, has destroyed any political credibility that the framework ever had in Warsaw, Prague, and Bratislava.

While the Chinese withdrawal from the multilateral forum does not correspond to a withdrawal from bilateral economic relations, Beijing remains a major trading partner for the vast majority of V4 states, and India is not positioned to fill that void. The opportunity into which India is stepping is distinct: the space for a partner without predatory capital, without a Moscow alliance, and without imperial history in the region. 

Operation Ganga in 2022, which evacuated over 20,000 Indians from Ukraine through Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Moldova, and Romania, created operational goodwill at the ground level that no framework can replicate. By some accounts, the Indian embassy in Warsaw was coordinating across multiple border crossings in the first 72 hours, the kind of on-the-ground credibility that no bilateral communiqué can manufacture after the fact.

THE HUNGARY PROBLEM

Hungary presents a unique case within the Visegrad framework. While it remains a member of both the European Union and NATO, its approach to Russia has at times differed from that of several of its Central European partners, leading to varied assessments of its strategic positioning. India has nevertheless continued to engage with Hungary, as reflected in the February 2026 Foreign Office Consultations, which reviewed the full spectrum of bilateral cooperation. This engagement reflects India's broader foreign policy approach of maintaining constructive relations with diverse partners while pursuing its own strategic interests.

At the same time, India's expanding partnerships across Central Europe are increasingly framed around shared economic, technological, and security objectives, including support for a stable, rules-based international order. Balancing these priorities while sustaining ties with partners that hold differing foreign policy positions illustrates the pragmatic and multi-vector nature of India's diplomacy rather than a contradiction in its broader regional strategy.

BEYOND ONE MINISTER'S LEGACY

The institutional architecture underpinning India's engagement with Central Europe is likely to endure beyond any single tenure. The frameworks, working groups, and strategic dialogues will continue. The more significant question is whether the strategic thinking that transformed Central Europe from a peripheral consideration into a distinct pillar of India's European engagement has been sufficiently institutionalized to guide future policymakers. The durability of this engagement will ultimately depend not on individuals but on the extent to which that strategic vision becomes embedded within India's foreign policy establishment.

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BY MANAN JINDAL

TEAM GEOSTRATA

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