With Silk Road projects, the People’s Republic is opening up markets, forming cliques and creating dependencies. In Europe too, whether in Duisburg or in the Balkans.
(Photo: imago images/Rupert Oberhäuser)
It’s been a year since the European Union announced a global infrastructure offensive. “Global Gateway” is the prestige project of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Europe’s key initiative in system competition with China. Von der Leyen has promised a “Team Europe” approach. She wanted to mobilize 300 billion euros to have rails, data cables and power lines laid worldwide and thus reduce the influence that China is exerting with its Silk Road initiative.
But Global Gateway hasn’t produced much more than empty phrases so far. An elaborately programmed website would have to be mentioned recently. On this you can lead a computer figure that looks like a knotted balloon over a virtual tropical island – for whatever reason.
Global Gateway is in danger of becoming a misnomer and ridiculing the EU’s geopolitical claims. Almost everything the Commission has announced under the new label so far are development projects that were planned anyway.
The initiative should not primarily focus on development policy goals, but on strategic goals. At least that is how the EU member states, who are demanding an answer to the challenge from China, imagined it.
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With Silk Road projects, the People’s Republic is opening up markets, forming cliques and creating dependencies. In Europe too, whether in Duisburg or in the Balkans. The Chinese investments are not to be understood as kind gifts, but as targeted attempts to influence political decisions through economic ties. Many governments have now become aware of this, which is why they are looking for an alternative. This is the chance for the Europeans – but the EU is in danger of missing it.
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According to EU estimates, 1,300 billion euros a year are missing to create a climate-neutral global economy. With Global Gateway, Europe could narrow this investment gap. But the Commission is standing in its own way.
“Global Gateway” is the prestige project of the head of the EU Commission.
(Photo: IMAGO/Lehtikuva)
Not all officials share von der Leyen’s geopolitical vision, with the powerful Directorate-General for International Partnerships standing in the way of Global Gateway’s success. The Brussels apparatus is interested in member states’ money, but not in their strategic input.
Von der Leyen can no longer watch the tactics of the specialist departments. Otherwise Global Gateway threatens to fail – and with it its claim to lead a “geopolitical commission”.
More: The EU has so far only opposed China’s Silk Road.