European Union praises India’s presidency, states India preserved the G20

On the side-lines of the G20 Summit being hosted in New Delhi, European Union praised India’s presidency, which not just witnessed international environment leaders sharing stage but also the consensus around the Delhi Leaders’ Declaration. While addressing the media, the EU official, who was the spokesperson involved in the negotiations of the New Delhi Leader’s Declaration, said, “There were question marks about the future of G20 presidency, and I think India’s strong leadership has preserved the G20.  And those open the space for presenting them as the next presidency to continue working on public issues.”

He added that Indian presidency has done an amazing job in terms of organization but also has provided a forum that brought leaders, who were split with regard to environmental policy, together at this G20 event.

“Together has been a great success by itself. When looking at the declaration, I think the fact that we have consensus around the document was far from clear until the very last moment. And I think the fact that India, with a lot of work from their team, has brought this together is really a success by itself," he said.

Appreciating Indian leadership to gain a consensus, the EU spokesperson spoke of last year’s G20 Summit in Bali, where a different concept of split language was adopted, where essentially quoting the UN General Assembly Resolution was only shown by a few but not by all. However, under India’s presidency, there is a joint text, which is quite strong.

Commenting on the deceleration, the spokesperson added, “It's a very rounded document that has the potential to be a good steppingstone to the Brazilian presidency.”

The European Union official also addressed the Ukraine war issue stating “this was probably the most contentious issue, because as the Indians went for a consensus document, which I think is very much in the spirit of the organization, it was extremely hard to bring different positions around the table and find agreement. Now my reading of the situation is that Russia's position had been even more challenging this time around than before. And Russia found fewer support by emerging economies than they've ever had before. So they find themselves in a rather isolated position. At the same time, the point was that Russia had to agree in a consensus process with the text.”

He also highlighted the key parts in the document with regards to Ukraine that were the formation of territorial integrity and serenity. The Deceleration text states that countries should be refraining from occupying territory and the acquisition of territory should not be recognized as a key point. It also called for a halt on attacks on food and energy infrastructure, which is critical going forward.