Italy, India set special strategic partnership during Modi’s Rome visit
Rome and New Delhi moved to a special strategic partnership as trade targets climbed to 20 billion euros by 2029 and business chiefs joined Modi's visit.
Italy and India used Narendra Modi’s Rome visit to push their relationship into a special strategic partnership, adding a more formal frame to ties that already span trade, defence, technology and energy. Modi, on his first bilateral visit to Italy, met Giorgia Meloni at the 17th-century Villa Doria Pamphili after previous encounters at international gatherings, including the G7 summit in 2024.
The upgrade fit a broader European effort to diversify commercial and strategic relationships while India sought deeper links with major economies beyond the United States and China. The European Commission said the EU and India concluded negotiations for a Free Trade Agreement on Jan. 27, 2026, calling it the largest such deal ever concluded by either side. The bloc was India’s largest trading partner in 2024, with goods trade worth 120 billion euros, a reminder that Rome’s outreach to New Delhi sits inside a much wider European calculation.
For Italy, the numbers make the case clear. India’s embassy in Rome said bilateral trade reached 14.37 billion euros in 2024, with Indian exports at 9.02 billion euros and imports from Italy at 5.70 billion euros. It said trade stood at 14.25 billion euros in 2025. The two governments want to lift that to 20 billion euros by 2029, a goal that would give Italian industry a larger stake in India’s expanding market and give Indian exporters deeper access to Italy’s manufacturing base.
The relationship has already been building for years. India and Italy elevated ties to a Strategic Partnership during Meloni’s state visit to India in March 2023, and India’s foreign ministry said cooperation has since widened into cyber security, innovation, defence, outer space, the green economy, energy security and transition, defence co-production and co-innovation, and the blue economy. The two countries marked 75 years of diplomatic relations in 2024, and Italy’s foreign ministry said a Joint Italy-India Action Plan 2025-2029 was adopted at the G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro in November 2024, covering clean energy, defence, artificial intelligence and sustainable mobility.
The Rome talks also had a business dimension. The itinerary included a working lunch with senior executives from leading Italian and Indian industrial groups, underscoring that both sides want the upgrade to translate into investment, supply-chain cooperation and joint industrial projects. India and Italy have also tied the relationship to the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, a sign that the partnership is being shaped not just by diplomacy but by Europe’s search for new routes, new markets and lower strategic exposure.
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