Belgian PM De Wever arrives in India for first visit in two decades

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever landed in New Delhi on 2 September for a three-day official visit, the first by a Belgian head of government to India in twenty years and his own first since taking office in February 2025. Defence minister Theo Francken travels with him, along with officials and defence-industry executives.

Bilateral talks with Prime Minister Narendra Modi are set for 3 September. The Ministry of External Affairs said the two will cover trade and investment, defence and security, technology, renewable energy, connectivity and people-to-people ties, plus regional and global files. De Wever will also give a keynote at a Confederation of Indian Industry event framed around the India-European Union free trade agreement still under negotiation.

After Delhi he goes to Mumbai on 4 September to meet diamond, port and logistics firms. Antwerp remains one of the world's main diamond hubs. About 35,000 people of Indian origin live in Belgium. Indian students there number 1,131 on the latest official count cited in briefings on the visit.

The timing is part of the story. India takes the BRICS chair on 12-13 September. Modi has just returned from the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Bishkek. Hosting a European prime minister in the same fortnight is a way of keeping Brussels on the calendar while Delhi chairs a grouping that includes China and Russia.

Belgium is a small state with outsized weight in diamonds, chemicals, ports and selected defence lines. Francken's presence tells Indian officials that procurement and industrial partnership are on the table, not only a photo with Modi. For New Delhi the useful ask is Belgian support inside the EU for a trade deal that has dragged for years over cars, dairy, carbon rules and government procurement.

De Wever leads a coalition in Brussels that is harder on migration and more open to defence spending than some of his predecessors. That mix is closer to the European centre-right that India has been courting since the Ukraine war and the Iran shipping crisis raised the cost of sitting only with one camp.

Nothing signed on 3 September will close an FTA. What the visit can do is put a Belgian prime minister on record in Mumbai and Delhi that India is a priority market for Antwerp's trades and for Belgian defence firms looking past European budgets. Whether that survives contact with EU negotiators is a later test.

For now the itinerary itself is the message: first Belgian prime ministerial visit in two decades, defence minister in the room, diamonds in Mumbai, FTA on the CII stage, BRICS a week later.