Science and technology cooperation is becoming a key pillar of India–Europe relations. Illustrate with examples.

India and Europe are increasingly working together in "big science": projects that cost too much for one country to build alone. In November 2026, India committed more than €7 million over five years from 2026-27 as a co-partner in Elettra 2.0, the upgrade of Italy's synchrotron at Trieste [1]. This shows that S&T is now a strategic part of the relationship, not a side issue.

1. Shared research facilities

• Elettra, Italy: Two India-centric beamlines, μXRD for working out protein structures and Xpress-SB for high-pressure studies of materials, will replace XRD2 and XPRESS. India helped build those older beamlines in 2016 at a cost of about Rs. 22 crore [1].
• CERN, Geneva: India became an Associate Member State in November 2016, which gives Indian scientists and industry a share in the world's leading particle-physics laboratory [2].
• Policy backing: DST's Mega Facilities for Basic Research scheme funds facilities in India and abroad, and Elettra is one of them [3].

2. Long-running ties and trained people

• Indian scientists have used Elettra since 1998, and India is now its second-largest user after Italy, with more than 1,100 experiment proposals [1].
• The Indo-Italian Executive Programme of Cooperation (EPOC) paid for about 50 Indian researchers a year to work there in 2022-24, and a new cycle runs for 2025-27 [1]. This trains people from universities that have no such equipment of their own.

3. Strategic and diplomatic value

• Formal agreements, such as the Letter of Intent signed between DST and the Italian side, turn scientific ties into government commitments [1].
• Paying for a share costs far less than building a national synchrotron, and it still gives India guaranteed beamtime and a say in how the facility is run [1].

4. Challenges

• Repeated payments: each foreign upgrade needs new money, as the retirement of the 2016 beamlines shows [1].
• Access gaps: visit funding runs in short cycles, and there is a gap while the old beamlines are shut down before the new ones open [1].

S&T cooperation through Elettra and CERN now combines shared facilities, training and diplomacy. India should plan access funding for the full five years, open some beamtime to industry, and use what it learns abroad to build up its own facilities. This would match Atmanirbhar Bharat and help make India–Europe science ties an equal, two-way partnership.