its highly critical report<\/a> on Wednesday (25 February).\u00a0<\/p>\nThe EU commission has marketed\u00a0Global Gateway as its\u00a0\u201cvalues-based\u201d\u00a0alternative to China\u2019s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the EU scheme has\u00a0a fraction of China\u2019s financial firepower.\u00a0Over the last 10 years, the BRI has spent about\u00a0$1.3 trillion\u00a0($800bn) on infrastructure and over $500bn on non-financial sector projects compared with the Global Gateway\u2019s pledged target to raise over $300bn in infrastructure finance, both private and public sector, by 2027.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Across Africa, for example, the commission says that Global Gateway will lead to \u20ac150bn of investment, but less than \u20ac10bn is being put up in guarantees in the EU budget.\u00a0<\/p>\n
MEPs\u00a0also\u00a0believed\u00a0that \u201cproject\u00a0selection\u00a0is overly\u00a0centralised\u00a0and top-down. We\u00a0favour\u00a0a model in which demand in partner countries is matched with offers from European businesses,\u201d\u00a0Andrews\u00a0said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHardly any Europeans have\u00a0ever even\u00a0heard of this strategy, which claims to have\u00a0mobilised\u00a0over \u20ac400bn in investment,\u201d said Andrews. <\/p>\n
\u201cClearly that must change,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Global Gateway also urges the commission to use a model in which demand in partner countries is matched with offers from European businesses. <\/p>\n
Andrews and other MEPs have\u00a0complained that otherwise EU project finance was used to grant tenders to companies from China and other rival powers.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
There is also frustration about the opacity of the\u00a0programme,\u00a0and how money is\u00a0actually being\u00a0raised for projects,\u00a0with the committee report\u00a0stating\u00a0that it\u00a0\u201cdeplores\u00a0the lack of clarity and transparency regarding the funding track record and how the figure of\u00a0\u20ac306bn was reached\u201d.<\/p>\n
Elsewhere, MEPs recommended that\u00a0Global Gateway should offer\u00a0\u201cdebt-for-nature or debt-for-climate swaps\u201d and that EU officials should make sure that any projects do not create more debt for poor countries.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The \u2018Lobito Corridor\u2019,\u00a0a rail network designed to connect\u00a0Angola to\u00a0Zambia\u2019s\u00a0copper-fields to foreign markets,\u00a0is\u00a0the\u00a0commission\u2019s flagship project\u00a0under Global Gateway.<\/p>\n
It was touted as such last October when the EU\u00a0executive hosted South Africa\u2019s\u00a0president\u00a0Cyril\u00a0Ramaphosa\u00a0and\u00a0Rwanda\u2019s president\u00a0Paul Kagame\u00a0at a summit in Brussels.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The corridor\u00a0\u201cwill cut the journey from the\u00a0centre\u00a0of the continent to the port from\u00a045 days\u00a0to just one week,\u201d commission chief Ursula\u00a0von der Leyen\u00a0said at the gathering. <\/p>\n
It combines two priorities in the EU\u2019s African strategy; an offer to invest in infrastructure and the EU\u2019s search for the minerals to power its green transition.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, long stretches of the railway in eastern Congo\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0working and\u00a0neither are the trains that are supposed to run on the network.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile,\u00a0Congolese officials in the Katanga region say they\u00a0aren\u2019t\u00a0close to running goods trains to service heavy industry that could take on manufacturing and processing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Though the report is not legally binding on the commission, it underscores the uneasiness held by many lawmakers about the way that the EU is promoting Global Gateway as a diplomatic tool.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The report is set to be\u00a0finalised\u00a0at the Parliament\u2019s March plenary session.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MEPs\u00a0have urged\u00a0the European Commission to rethink its\u00a0\u2018Global Gateway\u2019\u00a0investment\u00a0scheme, warning that it was unclear how the EU executive had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[217083,2000,299,5187,221891,229551,229554,221889,229549,229552,221890,229550,229553],"class_list":{"0":"post-788812","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-typedefinedterm","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-european","12":"tag-identifier26","13":"tag-identifier4291","14":"tag-identifier4473","15":"tag-nameafrica","16":"tag-nameeu-commission","17":"tag-nameglobal-gateway","18":"tag-termcodeafrica","19":"tag-termcodeeu-commission","20":"tag-termcodeglobal-gateway"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}