Connectivity, together with the security dimensions attached to it, is once again the main thread that runs through this week's BRI news. The Diplomat has published an article [Assessing the EU-China-US Triangle], which is an interview with Frans Paul der Putten, China expert and the coordinator of the China Centre at the Clingendael institute, The Hague. In this interview, he unpacks the strategic approach of the EU towards China’s Belt and Road and the impact of the US-China trade dispute on European economies. Van der Putten points out that the EU was at first receptive of the BRI and set up a bilateral connectivity platform for high level talks between Chinese and European Commission’s officials. The platform continues to exist with no significant result for further engagement between the two actors. In 2018, the EU published its own connectivity strategy for Europe and Asia, which was ‘a major shift in its approach to the BRI’. The main aim in the latter strategy is not to engage with BRI but to serve as a ‘response to the BRI’. In 2019, the EU convened a Europa Connectivity Forum, whose most significant result was the EU-Japan agreement to commence 'partnership on sustainable connectivity and quality infrastructure'. He then goes on to enumerate the challenges and negative impacts emanating from the US-China trade dispute on European (particularly German and Dutch) economy. The US becoming an erratic and unilateralist actor is giving impetus to the EU to develop its ‘strategic autonomy’, especially in the fields of economy and finance, while geopolitically the EU is likely to stay closer to the US, which can serve as a geopolitical counterbalance to Russia.
The EastAsiaForum has published an article [Empowering the EU–Japan connectivity partnership] by Maaike Okano-Heijmans, also an expert at the Clingendael Institute. In the article, she examines the implications and challenges of the EU–Japan Partnership on Sustainable Connectivity and Quality Infrastructure. She argues that the process has had a promising start and good ideas (such as digital connectivity) in it but now the challenge is to put teeth in these paper tigers. The initiative is a response to China’s BRI, which is why it emphasizes ‘sustainability’ and ‘quality’. Although promising and focused on good ideas, there are challenges along the way of connectivity cooperation between the EU and Japan. Some such challenges are the lack of ‘like-minded’ actors that can add real projects and funds, no consensus on how to build synergies, Trump’s unilateral approach even towards like-minded actors, and adding actual substance (currently scant) to all these ideas that can benefit both the EU and Japan in the ‘great game’ of connectivity.
M. Forough
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