By Max Biederbeck-Ketterer, Rüdiger Kiani-Kreß
Berlin wants to push EU infrastructure projects around the world in competition with China’s New Silk Road. The EU’s billion-euro project for this has been running for a year without success.
The EU’s second major project to compete with China’s New Silk Road is already threatening to fail.
Also Read: Check out our coverage of the new multipolar world order
The Global Gateway project was officially launched about a year ago; it aims to provide 300 billion euros for European infrastructure projects around the world to displace Chinese projects.
However, virtually nothing has come from Global Gateway in the past twelve months – because of internal friction in Brussels, they say, but also because the EU’s response to the Ukraine war has “tied up all capacities”.
Commentators speak of a “bluff worth billions”.
Now, however, the German government is asking for the project to finally breathe; it is “an important geopolitical instrument” that is “of great importance for strengthening the influence of the EU”, according to a letter from several federal ministers to the EU Commission.
Berlin proposes, for example, that lithium mines near Valjevo (Serbia) be pushed forward – to benefit battery production in Europe.
The population has been protesting against the existing extraction projects near Valjeva for years.
GLOBAL GATEWAY
The Global Gateway is now the EU’s second attempt to counter China’s New Silk Road (Belt and Road Initiative, BRI) with a rival project.
The first attempt, the EU-Asia Connectivity Strategy launched in September 2018, failed miserably.
In October 2021, the federally owned foreign trade agency Germany Trade & Invest (gtai) confirmed that it had failed to “achieve[s] any significant success[es].”
A little while ago, on September 15, 2021, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen launched a new effort and announced a new infrastructure initiative called the Global Gateway in her State of the Union speech.
Here too, initially the work was quite slow.
In mid-November 2021, it was announced that the planning status had so far reached a volume of only €40 billion – a pittance compared to China’s BRI.
Only in a further energetic effort can the financial volume be increased, at least on paper, up to 300 billion US dollars.
And it seems possible to give the overall project a PR layer that, in early December 2021, made the Global Gateway look, at least to the public, like an ambitious project that promised good prospects.
The name of the project was “Europe’s Billion Dollar Bluff.
EUROPE’S BILLION DOLLAR BLUFF
Since then, however, virtually nothing has come of the project.
At the end of last year, Nils Schmid, foreign policy spokesman for the SPD parliamentary group in the German Bundestag, insisted that the Global Gateway “should be operational from the beginning of next year … in the Balkans and in Africa …
This did not happen; on the contrary, during the year, the EU simply implemented development policy projects that it had planned for a long time anyway.
Explaining this, the commission was told that the Global Gateway bureaucracy had failed due to persistent internal resistance.
Moreover, efforts to respond to the Ukraine war had “tied up all capacities” in Brussels. Commentators have begun to classify Global Gateway as Europe’s “billion-dollar bluff” that was announced in 2021 with dramatic gestures, but – so far, anyway – has largely failed.
The EU drew ridicule with a similarly failed PR project that was supposed to win over young people between the ages of 18 and 35 in the Global Gateway.
It is a website with a virtual world on a tropical island where a party is being held. A total of six people attended the launch event online, including at least one journalist.
PR project cost: 387,000 euros.
AN IMPORTANT GEOPOLITICAL TOOL
Berlin is now pressing to prevent the complete failure of the Global Gateway.
It is reported that recently the Ministers of Foreign Affairs (Annalena Baerbock), Development (Svenja Schulze), Economy (Robert Habeck) and Transport (Volker Wissing) sent a letter to the EU Commission stating that the project is “an instrument of geopolitically important that is of great importance for strengthening the EU’s strategic and global influence” – “especially considering the global competition of systems”.
Therefore, Global Gateway should become a success.
“It is essential for the credibility of the EU and its member states” in this regard “that we do not simply relabel existing or already planned development cooperation projects”, he continues.
Instead, the EU should “identify new, visible projects and mobilize private sector funds” to implement the projects “as soon as possible”.
Accompanying this, the German government proposes 20 “lighthouse projects” whose dimensions go far beyond the usual development projects; Baerbock wants them now “quickly put into practice”.
A EUROPEAN ALTERNATIVE
Some of the seed projects simply correspond to German raw material interests.
This applies, for example, to the plan to mine lithium near the Serbian town of Valjevo for the production of batteries in Europe.
The costs are calculated from 600 to 900 million euros. Lithium mining projects have been underway near Valjevo for years.
They regularly face protests from the population because they repeatedly cause severe environmental damage, and some of them have now been banned by the courts.
This does not stop the red-yellow-green federal government from supporting large-scale lithium mining near Valjevo.
Other proposals aim only to curb China’s influence.
For example, the German government is targeting a large wind energy project not far from Ghana’s capital Accra.
Currently, a Chinese company is considering entering the Konikablo project; says: “Including Global Gateway may prevent a download”.
The German government also calls for the expansion of transport links between Laos, Vietnam and Thailand.
This could be a “European alternative to the north-south route” of the New Silk Road. The value of the project in the power struggle against China eclipses the question of what benefit it has for the population.
PRIVATE SECTOR ACT
The German economy hopes for concrete benefits from the Global Gateway.
For example, the Federation of German Industries (BDI) assumes “that German companies will benefit greatly from orders in developing and emerging countries through the Global Gateway”.
Foreign Minister Baerbock therefore places importance on “benefiting the private sector from the start”: there must be “a central point of contact for companies”.
In addition to Southeast Europe and Africa, the Federal Foreign Office also recommends Latin America as a priority region.
He says that not only are there large deposits of raw materials needed for the energy transition – such as lithium – but above all, China is rapidly expanding its influence there.
Join us on Telegram: t.me/theriotimes
