'The Global Getaway': More Empty Promises from the EU?
by Judith Bergman • February 14, 2023 at 5:00 am
The Global Gateway project was launched in December 2021. Meanwhile, China's BRI was launched in 2012 and has spread all over the globe, especially to Africa, Latin America and Asia, where it has gained China vast influence. The Communist Party newspaper China Daily recently claimed that in 2022 alone, China had signed new contracts with BRI countries worth nearly $100 billion.
As of March 2022, the number of countries around the world that have joined the BRI by signing a Memorandum of Understanding with China was 147, according to the Green Finance and Development Center at Fudan University in Shanghai. Forty-three of those countries were in sub-Saharan Africa and another 18 countries were in North Africa and the Middle East.
The US Center for Global Development has criticized the Global Gateway program as a "mere packaging exercise of things that have already been programmed," and saying that the €300 billion promised in new investments is not new at all.
The Global Gateway project is "a strategy to put together what was already going to happen and present it as something new, and if our partners are tricked by this then more fool them". — Barry Andrews, an Irish member of the European Parliament, December 15, 2022.
"While China has roads, bridges and dams to show for its 20-year-engagement with Africa... the EU brings red tape and a lecture." — African view of Global Gateway, Euractiv, December 20, 2021.
Since 1991, China's foreign ministers have made it a tradition always to travel to Africa on their first trip abroad in the New Year. This year, China's new Foreign Minister Qin Gang visited Ethiopia, Gabon, Angola, Benin and Egypt in a week-long tour.
"Who listens and understands the context in which African countries are operating is going to be the better development partner... The EU is the one that doesn't listen.... Was there consultation with African partners leading up to the global gateway? Zero." — Ovigwe Eguegu, Nigerian policy adviser at consultancy Development Reimagined, Euractiv, December 20, 2021.
"Beijing has long viewed African countries as occupying a central position in its efforts to increase China's global influence and revise the international order..." — US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, 2020 Report to Congress.
It has been just over a year since the European Union launched its Global Gateway infrastructure project to compete with China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The Global Gateway project was launched in December 2021. Meanwhile, China's BRI was launched in 2012 and has spread all over the globe, especially to Africa, Latin America and Asia, where it has gained China vast influence. The Communist Party newspaper China Daily recently claimed that in 2022 alone, China had signed new contracts with BRI countries worth nearly $100 billion.
Promising to dedicate up to €300 billion between 2021 and 2027 to invest in the digital, energy and transport sectors in developing countries and to strengthen health, education and research systems across the world, the EU and its member states have vowed to become a sustainable alternative to China's BRI. It is questionable, however, whether such an ambition is even feasible at this late stage.
