Republic Day is around the corner, and it’s time to know all about the Chief Guest visiting India on the occasion of the 77th anniversary of the adoption of the Constitution of India. This year, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will be the 77th Republic Day chief guest, visiting India from 25 to 27 January. She will be accompanied by the President of the European Council, António Luís Santos da Costa.
The two leaders will co-chair the 16th India-EU summit. Ursula von der Leyen is set to hold “restricted and delegation-level talks” with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 27 January on the sidelines of the much-awaited Free Trade Agreement. The duo will also meet the Indian President Droupadi Murmu. As India and the European Union move forward with talks on the trade deal amid Trump’s tariff policies, the two sides are expected to move closer to signing an agreement after years of negotiations.
Ursula von der Leyen is a German politician and physician who assumed office in 2019 as the President of the European Commission. Prior to this, she held multiple positions in the German federal government between 2005 and 2019. Before joining the European Commission, she served as Federal Minister for Defense in Angela Merkel’s cabinet.
Member of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its affiliated European political party, the European People’s Party (EPP), she was re-elected as the head of the Commission in July 2024.
Born on 8 October 1958 in Brussels, Belgium, she had a bilingual upbringing. Her father was the CEO of the food company Bahlsen and was involved in state politics in Lower Saxony. She moved to Germany’s Sehnde during her early teenage years. A keen equestrian, she married Heiko von der Leyen in 1986, who hails from a family of silk merchants
Ursula von der Leyen calls highly anticipated FTA talks ‘mother of all deals’
On Tuesday, during an address at the ongoing World Economic Forum in Switzerland’s Davos, the European Commission President said that India and the European Union are on the cusp of a “historic trade agreement” that would create a market comprising 2 billion people. She further noted that this market would thus account for almost a quarter of the global GDP, as she called the highly anticipated talks, ‘the mother of all deals.’
Underlining the scale of the critical deal for India and the 27-nation EU, she said, “I will travel to India. There is still work to do. But we are on the cusp of a historic trade agreement. Some call it the mother of all deals.” The European Union is India’s biggest trade partner and the FTA is expected to significantly enhance ties after negotiations severed in 2013 and subsequent concord attempts failed.
