title: Europe’s global gateway: a new geostrategic framework for development policy?
Creators: name: Furness, Mark
name: Keijzer, Niels
Publisher: name: German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE)
publisherIdentifier: https://ror.org/01t3zke88
publisherIdentifierScheme: ROR
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: European Union
subject: development policy
subject: international relations

description: The proposal by the European Union (EU) to build a “Global Gateway” to the world is
 potentially an important juncture in EU foreign relations. Since its official launch in
 December 2021, most attention has been put on the initiative’s geo­strategic implications
 and whether the EU can compete with China. Less attention has been paid to the Global
 Gateway’s implications for EU development policy in terms of strategic objectives,
 decision-making, thematic focus and financing. Two aspects are important in this regard.
 The first is whether the Global Gateway is a serious proposal that can deliver on its
 headline promises to massively increase European infrastructure financing in developing
 countries, provide partners with an alternative economic and political model to that being
 offered by China, and make a meaningful contribution to their efforts to realise the 2030
 Agenda. The EU’s announcement that the Global Gateway will generate up to EUR 300 billion
 in investment by 2027 grabbed headlines, many of them sceptical. There is, however, no
 reason to doubt that the initiative will be adequately financed. Although the planning for
 the EU’s international aid budget for 2021-2027 has mostly been completed, a significant
 proportion remains flexible and could be spent on Global Gateway projects. As for the EU’s
 implementing capacity, the Gateway’s financial toolbox draws on the EU’s recent
 experiences with the Juncker Investment Plan and the External Investment Plan, which have
 both been utilised by development banks and private investors. The second aspect is
 whether the Global Gateway heralds a change in the EU’s motivations, objectives and
 modalities for cooperation with developing countries and regions. On the surface, the
 Global Gateway does not seem to change much. There are many thematic overlaps with
 existing strategic frameworks for engaging with Africa and the EU’s Neighbourhood. There
 is even a sense that the Global Gateway turns back the clock to the days when the EU
 focussed aid spending on infrastructure and emphasised its “political neutrality”. The
 geopolitical context in which the EU finds itself is, however, being transformed by
 pandemic, wars and multipolarity. The impacts of epochal events such as the Covid-19
 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are still playing out. The Global Gateway
 signals a major adjustment in the EU’s response to these transformations, particularly
 regarding its engagement with the “Global South”. This will create a new paradigm for EU
 development policy, defined by strategic interests. It is likely that the new geostrategic
 framework will weaken the EU’s commitment to, and observance of, core develop­ment policy
 principles, especially the focus on poverty, partner country ownership, open governance
 and the “do no harm” principle. The Global Gateway’s use of aid to cata­lyse commercial
 investment risks further instrumentalising EU development policy. Specific measures are
 therefore needed to safeguard and promote the principles that the EU and its member states
 have committed themselves to.
description: Briefing Paper, 1/2022