Ahead of this year's India-EU meeting, Sushma Swaraj meets Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz

New Delhi: External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj held a meeting with Austria’s Federal Minister for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs Sebastian Kurz here on Tuesday. External affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup tweeted:

Connecting with the heart of Europe. EAM @SushmaSwaraj meets Austrian Foreign Minister @sebastiankurz in Delhi pic.twitter.com/DJ2rAP8xme

— Randhir Jaiswal (@MEAIndia) February 16, 2016

Kurz is also scheduled to meet union Minister for Women and Child Development Maneka Gandhi, Minister of State for Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy Piyush Goyal, and Minister of Railways Suresh Prabhu. On Thursday, Kurz will visit the campuses of Infosys and the Plansee India High Performance Materials in Mysuru. Kurz’s visit assumes significance as a summit-level meeting between the European Union (EU) and India is scheduled to be held in the first half of this year in Brussels after a gap of about four years. The prime ministers of Finland, Lithuania and Sweden also came to attend the ‘Make in India Week’ that got underway in Mumbai on Saturday. “The new economic and social agenda of the new (NDA) government is specially attractive for the EU,” EU Ambassador to India Tomasz Kozlowski said in a media interaction in December. “India is perceived by us as one of the engines of economic growth.” New Delhi is one of just four capital cities in the world where all EU member states have full-fledged missions, the others being Washington, Beijing and Moscow. IANS