Executive Summary Despite their shared threat landscape and common security concerns, EU and India have been unable to make substantive progress on cybersecurity cooperation, beyond the regular annual dialogue. The two sides have fundamentally different strategic cultures, and varying understandings that inform their cybersecurity thinking, such as on data governance and application of human rights. By building on their distinct domestic perspectives, both partners can explore some specific areas of cooperation in the domain of cybercrime and cyber hygiene. This potential partnership builds on their expanding cooperation in other related domains of technology, as evident from the establishment of the India – EU Trade and Technology Council. The growing challenge of cybercrime and proliferation of ransomware for EU and India provides an urgent imperative to advance collaboration. They can realize this by establishing a dedicated Working Group for cyber forensics and information-sharing. Supplementing this can also be the potential collaboration to tackle darknet marketplaces. Cyber hygiene is another promising area of cooperation, where both sides can shape and share best practices and training platforms and mechanisms. The EU can hereby draw on its own and the experiences of its member-states. Introduction At the center of the European Union’s (EU) and India’s strategic partnership stands the puzzling contrast between growing geoeconomic and geopolitical convergences and fundamentally different strategic cultures. The cybersecurity relations between the EU and India are exemplary of the relationship’s disconnect. This essay seeks to contribute to the understanding of EU-India cybersecurity relations by emphasizing how domestic experiences have shaped attitudes and priorities of both partners differently over time. We ascertain, that by considering the distinct domestic perspectives of both partners on cybersecurity, this brief arrives at sensible recommendations for future advancements in the partnership. This brief consists of four sections. To get a more profound understanding of the varying understandings that inform cybersecurity thinking, the first section introduces the origins of cybersecurity awareness in the EU and India. The second section traces the convergence of ideas, interests, and institutions within the evolving partnership to identify the key advancements and well as the uniting and dividing factors in EU-India cybersecurity relations. The third part assesses the achievements of EU-India cybersecurity relations on cybercrime, and cyber hygiene.
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