Organized by Eugenia da Conceição-Heldt and Sophie Meunier

The Global Gateway was officially announced by the European Union in December 2021 as a new strategic and investment plan mobilizing public and private funds up to 300 billion euros by 2027 for global, sustainable development financing. Some call it the EU’s answer to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The Global Gateway is conceived as a trade, investment, and development program that could secure the EU economically. At the same time, the Global Gateway is a geopolitical tool that enables the EU to enter the race for global infrastructure financing to counterweight China’s influence in the Global South. Is this new policy a novel geoeconomic tool in the ever growing economic security arsenal or a free-standing program designed to repackage old policies by bringing in the private sector and giving it a new sustainability twist? This workshop will explore how the Global Gateway articulates with the EU’s new Economic and Security Strategy announced in June 2023 and, more broadly, how the EU is rethinking its place in the world as a geopolitical actor and trying to regain control over its old spheres of influence.

This workshop will bring together academics and practitioners from both the public and private sectors.

This workshop is organized by the Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination (LISD) and co-sponsored by the European Union Program at Princeton (EUPP) and the Program in Contemporary European Politics and Society (EPS).