When Tony Blair embarked on Britain's stewardship of the European Union, he made clear that the rise of Asia's superpowers was a key priority.

"China and India in a few decades will be the world's largest economies, each of them with populations three times that of the whole of the European Union," the British prime minister said in a well-received speech to the European parliament in June.

"The idea of Europe, united and working together, is essential for our nations to be strong enough to keep our place in this world." But Mr Blair's trip to China and India this week has exposed the limits of the EU's ability to forge ties with other global actors, despite a clutch of announcements and one breakthrough deal.

China has focused on improving relations with the EU since the late 1990s and this week assented to a compromise on textiles that relieved the pressure on the EU and trade commissioner Peter Mandelson.

Beijing gave its approval partly because the deal helped China's own booming trade surplus and partly because it built up credit with Europe.

All the same, the EU has been unable to give China either of the things it most wants from Brussels: formal recognition as a "market economy", which can alleviate anti-dumping duties, and an end to the arms embargo imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown.

The US, which has lobbied furiously against scrapping the arms embargo, argues that the mere idea of lifting the ban revealed Europe's irresponsible attitude towards tensions in the South China Sea.

The EU maintains that its policy of "engagement" is the best way to ensure that China's rise remains a peaceful one.

EU-India political relations remain markedly less developed - there was never any question that Mr Blair would offer Delhi the same kind of acceptance of its nuclear-weapon status as President George W Bush gave this year.

While the EU is India's largest trading partner, India's share in the EU's global trade is under 2 per cent. The country represents an even lower proportion of the EU's investments abroad.

"It is time that we seriously examine the reasons for this less-than-satisfactory state of affairs," said Kamal Nath, India's commerce and industry minister.

"We need to find innovative solutions to overcome this hiatus in our economic relations." In spite of Mr Blair's six-month-long presidency of the EU, his travels this week had many of the trappings of an old-fashioned British trade and investment mission.

"Interest in Tony Blair and in his halo as UK prime minister is crowding out any interest in the EU dimension of his trip to India," says Ashank Desai, chief executive of Mastek, an Indian software company that worked on London's congestion charge.

One underlying problem is that the EU finds it difficult to forge a common line on relations with big powers, since the leaders of the EU big member states prize their own bilateral relations with world leaders.

Indeed, Jose Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, proved unable to answer a question in New Delhi about India's bid for a permanent United Nations Security Council seat - because there is no common European position.

Some Chinese strategists contend that the EU's position has become even less clear after last year's expansion to 25 member-states, although in truth the main objection may be that the new countries are more open to US lobbying on issues such as the arms embargo.

"The differences within the EU on China depend in large part on an internal European debate - whether we are more liberal or protectionist," adds one EU ambassador in Brussels.

His comments could apply to India too. Even so, Europe remains free of the geopolitical tensions with Beijing that have seen even relatively staid US publications obsess about topics such as: "How we would fight China".

Among the EU-China and EU-India announcements this week - covering topics such as cleaner energy technology and civil aviation - plans to work together on the EU's Galileo satellite project were particularly significant.

Some European countries, notably France, believe that by reducing global dependence on the US satellite navigation system, Galileo will help bring about a "multipolar world".

And that, they believe, is a goal that India and China can fully share.- (Financial Times Service)