[{"bbox": [96, 152, 1136, 313], "category": "Text", "text": "India is the world's fourth largest economy in purchasing power parity, and the fastest growing economy in the G20⁵. Geopolitically, India is in competition with China, trying to diversify its supply chains and strategic relations through the lens of a multipolar world, strengthening ties with the West, while maintaining strategic links with Russia and other partners. India provides development assistance beyond its neighbours, including trilaterally and in Africa. India has positioned itself as the voice of the “Global South”, particularly through its recent G20 chairmanship in 2023, while advocating for a more multi-polar international order."}, {"bbox": [96, 324, 1136, 485], "category": "Text", "text": "The EU's strategic interests are captured in the EU-India Strategy (2018), with key objectives being to support sustainable modernisation and for the EU to leverage its bilateral cooperation on to the global stage, including on global challenges. The EU-India Roadmap 2025 (supported by several sectoral EU-India partnerships) reflects the EU's wide cooperation ambitions, while the EU-India Connectivity Partnership (2021) underlines the importance of sustainable connectivity, including through trilateral cooperation. Supporting this modality enables India to play a greater role in delivering the SDGs internationally."}, {"bbox": [96, 496, 1136, 922], "category": "Text", "text": "The creation of the International Solar Alliance (ISA) and the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure (CDRI) demonstrate India's desire to be an international player on sustainability issues. A trilateral cooperation action with India will help to jointly design and implement projects for furthering SDGs and related climate goals in third beneficiary countries as well as reinforce Team Europe support to ISA building on its earlier programme, which ended in 2023. ISA is a joint initiative of France and India, launched during COP21 with the aim of making an unprecedented effort to promote solar energy. The goal of ISA is to set the ground rules, norms and standards for solar energy, in order to obtain a rapid and massive deployment in countries that are rich in solar resources but where the risks are still seen as high. ISA is putting in place concrete tools, capacity-building measures and innovative financial instruments to support solar technology deployment. ISA'S STAR C (Solar Technology Application Resource Centre) programme aims to build the necessary human capacity and skills within ISA's member countries to undertake energy transition on their own while also boosting economic growth and job creation. It is also important to highlight that the ISA has a strong commitment and advocates for equal opportunities and women's empowerment within the renewable energy landscape. The EU support will bring sustainability and scalability of EU MS actions and enhance political cooperation between Europe and India. The EU MS have been demanding a prominent role of the EU to the ISA General Assembly in order to enhance the visibility of Team Europe to come with a common voice, similar to the role the EU is playing in CDRI."}, {"bbox": [96, 933, 1136, 1120], "category": "Text", "text": "EU's potential support to the ISA has been welcomed during various coordination fora with the EU Member States (EU MS) in India. It is expected to strengthen the Team Europe approach through reinforcing the French contribution to the STAR-C programme, steering the EU MS position and speaking with one voice at ISA Annual General Assembly meetings. Team Europe support to the ISA STAR C programme will build the necessary human capacity and skills within identified partner member countries to take forward the energy transition on their own, while also boosting economic growth and job creation, building on specific EU MS expertise, experience and best practices in regard to the solar sector."}, {"bbox": [96, 1147, 1136, 1440], "category": "Text", "text": "This Action will contribute to deepening the partnership with India and help deliver 1) Global Gateway, 2) the external dimension of the European Green Deal, 3) joint actions in third countries; (4) TTC deliverables. The aim will be to develop and facilitate EU-India collaboration in pilot third countries and suggest digitalisation for sustainable development or digital financial inclusion as one possible area, and also explore the development of new and innovative market-based mechanisms in priority sectors such as, clean energy, sustainable agriculture, green mobility, connectivity, social protection, nutrition, water and sanitation, education, women's empowerment, health and other mutually agreed priority sector(s). The approach would be to pursue and incubate relatively small-scale pilot projects/initiatives, to strengthen recently completed pilots, which have the potential to scale up. The Action will help implement the EU's Gender Action Plan III, notably its priorities on \"addressing the challenges and harnessing the opportunity of the green transition\" and \"promoting economic and social rights and empowering girls and women\"."}, {"bbox": [85, 1466, 341, 1497], "category": "Section-header", "text": "## 2.2 Problem Analysis"}, {"bbox": [96, 1512, 1136, 1593], "category": "Text", "text": "With the challenges involved in achieving the SDGs, innovative partnerships are needed. The EU and India have discussed this in policy dialogues over the last few years, recognising the need to join forces in third countries which have expressed their willingness to work in a tripartite framework to address those challenges. Least"}, {"bbox": [85, 1620, 678, 1647], "category": "Footnote", "text": "⁵ 6.1% expected GDP growth for 2023 (IMF projections January 2023)."}, {"bbox": [1027, 1655, 1144, 1682], "category": "Page-footer", "text": "Page 5 of 19"}]