Pakistan, seen from Europe
According to a report by Dawn… HERE is something new. For five days last week, I was part of a small group of Pakistani journalists invited by the European Union (EU) to visit Brussels and interact with their officials who deal with all manner of issues, from Pakistan to Russia to the Middle East and the US and the big tech platforms. Over the years, I have been a part of many such delegations hosted by many different countries but there was something different this time.
This was the first time in any such visit that nobody had any major complaint against Pakistan. People asked about Pakistan’s relations with China, and though there was a competitive aspect to the questioning, it wasn’t hostile. This is a sharp break from all my previous such engagements.
Over the years, it had been quite normal on such trips for one major complaint against Pakistan to dominate the agenda. For example, over a decade ago, on a similar trip to Australia, everybody we met asked about the Supreme Court’s verdict on the Reko Diq deal. In other trips, it was perceived support for terrorist groups based out of Pakistan that were the bone of contention. In at least two such trips, there was active shouting, mostly by officials from the other side.
It is easy to see that something important has changed and Pakistan’s stock in the eyes of the European capitals has risen. Given the renewed bonhomie between Pakistan’s leadership and the Trump administration, as well as the good relations Pakistan is enjoying with China and the important partnerships shaping up with Saudi Arabia and Turkiye, the sharp turnaround in Pakistan’s fortunes on the global stage is palpable. The engagements in the EU only served to underscore this reality.
Everybody laid the emphasis on GSP-Plus as the central plank of the EU’s relationship with Pakistan. The grant of this preferential trade status, through which Pakistan ran a trade surplus of almost $6 billion from the EU last year, is up for renewal and a team will be visiting in November to take stock of the progress the government has made in meeting the rights-related benchmarks set out for it. These include, but are not limited to, treatment of religious minorities, continuation of the moratorium on the death penalty along with reform of the procedure for clemency, enforced disappearances, labour rights and more.
Something important has changed and Pakistan’s stock in the eyes of the European capitals has risen.
There are a lot of specifics to discuss, but the overall sense was positive. The message from the EU side was to not take the GSP-Plus status for granted, but the sense was also there that Pakistan has been making visible progress in meeting the benchmarks for renewal so far. Room for complacency is limited, but so is room for alarm.
Pakistan’s relations with China are being seen with some concern in Brussels, but nothing that would imply a zero-sum view of the situation. What was obvious from the engagements is that the EU’s interests in Pakistan are limited by comparison to China’s. For Brussels, the agenda is dominated by Russia and the war in Ukraine, which, they underscored repeatedly, they view as a ‘war of imperialist aggression’ and they would brook no talk of it as anything other than an act of naked aggression.
Next up, their agenda is full: trying to deal with a capricious Trump administration. The challenge from America is twofold. First is the melting away of the security-related commitments under which Europe has grown up after World War II. Increasingly, they are being told to arrange for their own security, either by footing the bill for Nato, by raising their own defence expenditures, or by raising their own forces altogether.
Second, and not any less important, is the end of the era of free trade that America had long championed, along with Europe. In one frank exchange, an official agreed that the tariff wars are not some temporary aberration. Rather, they herald the rise of a new protectionism that will define the world economy from here onwards.
For Europe, this is a serious problem. They are adjusting, we were told, by diversifying their exports and engaging with regional trade blocs like Mercosur in South America or the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership in the Asia-Pacific (among others). According to their calculations, these arrangements can help compensate for almost 75 per cent of the loss they will suffer from being cut out of the American market, and the remaining 25pc they intend to make up from increased trade initiatives within the EU itself.
Both of these are a long shot. Fiscally, the states that make up the EU are burdened with expenditures they cannot sustain, so carrying greater defence expenditures will be a tough choice. And in trade they are getting beaten by China and dumped by the US.
At the same time, they are acutely aware of the growing danger from right-wing neo-populist parties from within, which poses a threat to the multilateral cosmopolitanism that the EU embodies. This makes the populism engulfing America, which is driving that country to retreat from its trade and security commitments, more familiar to Europeans than to their peers in Asia, because their own societies are wracked by the same phenomenon.
Our own prodding on the genocide in Gaza was usually met with a stock answer that for the EU to agree on a course of action, a large number of countries have to come to an agreement around it. They were aware that this places a question mark over the EU’s professed commitment to values as the cornerstone of its foreign policy, and in one case, they tried to point to the resolution passed by the European Parliament in September calling for a ceasefire and a resumption of humanitarian aid to Gaza. But beyond that, there was silence.
The writer is a business and economy journalist.
Published in Dawn, October 9th, 2025 complete report is on below link. Source: https://www.dawn.com/news/1947583/pakistan-seen-from-europe