Belgium, (Brussels Morning Newspaper) The European Commission has assessed the progress of its Global Gateway geopolitical project and plans for expanding it in the coming period.
EC President Ursula von der Leyen convened the first Global Gateway Board meeting on Sunday, commenting on progress and plans to invest additional 300 billion euro by 2027, the Commission noted in a statement.
“Global Gateway is above all a geopolitical project, which seeks to position Europe in a competitive international marketplace,” she stated and added “it is a critical tool because infrastructure investments are at the heart of today’s geopolitics.”
Von der Leyen stressed that EU’s investments focus on making recipients strategically autonomous and pointed out that many partner countries are willing to cooperate.
“The first year of implementation shows the demand for sustainable investments,” she concluded.
The Global Gateway Board assessed the progress made in the first year of the project, with Commissioner for International Partnership Jutta Urpilainen and Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Olivér Várhelyi presenting the results.
The two commissioners pointed out that the Global Gateway focused in its first year on expansion of digital infrastructure and production of energy from renewable sources, among other.
Infrastructure expansion
The EU invested 342 million euro in the Medusa optical fibre between Algeria, Cyprus, Egypt, France, Italy, Morocco, Portugal, Spain and Tunisia as well as extended the BELLA optical network to the Caribbean and Central America.
As far as power interconnections go, the EU pushed ahead with the Trans-Balkan Electricity Corridor aimed at connecting aspiring member states Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia with bloc members Croatia, Hungary, Italy and Romania.
In addition, the bloc invested in solar farms in Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia, and wind farms in North Macedonia and Serbia.
As part of the Just Transition Partnership, the EU is to invest 2.4 billion euro in Indonesia and 3 billion in South Africa. Since the bloc launched the Global Gateway, it committed more than 9 billion euro in grants for investments in Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and the Pacific.
Von der Leyen met with EU industry representatives ahead of the Global Gateway Board meeting to discuss ways to make it easier for the private sector to take part in the bloc’s strategy.
