Trying to fulfill the European pledge at the latest G7 meeting, the EU Foreign Ministers Approved The ‘Globally Connected Europe’ Scheme as A Belt And Road Initiative Alternative. More specifically the idea is to promote visible infrastructure projects to link Europe to the world from 2022. The German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, has said that China is using economic means to increase its political influence around the world. It is, he rightly argues, ‘useless moaning about this, we must offer alternatives’. This initiative is supposed to be one such alternative.
Along the same lines, Joseph Borrell has promoted the idea that connectivity should be the at the center of European foreign policy. He advocates for paying more attention to ‘connectivity problems with the broader Middle East and looking forward to Central Asia and China, but not with the same approach and the same purposes that China has with the Belt and Road initiative.’ It will be interesting and complicated to see how this alternative supply chain idea develops in practice even while China-EU trade is increasing despite the freezing of the EU-China Agreement on Investment (CAI).
M. Forough
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