China launched its Belt and Road Initiative in 2013 and this multidimensional program, aimed at fostering cooperation and “win-win” relationships with partner States, is often described as a geopolitical tool shaped by China to counter the American strategy of the pivot to Asia and the Indo-Pacific concept. Shaking international relations, the BRI is often perceived by several actors on the international scene (Japan, the USA, the European Union, India) as being a threat to their interests. The EU launched the Global Gateway as a reply to the BRI, enacting a reform of its international relations whereby economic and political cooperation is increasingly aimed at achieving its strategic, geopolitical goals – an instructive illustration being the IMEC Corridor project. Are the BRI and the Global Gateway geopolitical grand designs on a colliding course?

In response to a host of interconnected crises and associated global challenges, the EU’s understanding and expectations of its global role has considerably changed during the past years. As part of the EU's response, its development policy has been reframed and repositioned to play a more service-oriented role in supporting the “external dimensions” of other EU policy areas including security, trade, energy and migration. One key step in this direction was the introduction of the Global Gateway Initiative in December 2021. As the EU’s global connectivity strategy, its discourse commits to shaping mutual-benefit oriented partnerships with its partners in the Global South. Yet many of its flagship projects are designed to pursue the EU's economic and geopolitical interests, thus risking exposing the EU to accusations of neo-colonialism and neo-mercantilism. This paper contributes to the emerging research on Global Gateway, which has so far largely focused on the Brussels-based debate, by reviewing the implementation of concrete flagship initiatives. To this end, it looks into the EU-Africa Green Energy Initiative, a most likely case to study the hierarchisation of the EU’s objectives. In particular, the investments made into the green hydrogen economy in Namibia and Morocco are used as case studies to better understand how the EU addresses the trade-offs between its own strategic interests and the needs and priorities of its partners.

In recent years, infrastructure and connectivity initiatives have emerged as key factors in international relations and geopolitics. Among the most prominent of these is China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which has attracted global attention, with 151 countries—including 17 EU member states—signing Memoranda of Understanding. Despite facing criticism for its transparency and objectives, the BRI has significantly expanded China’s global influence in international governance.

In response to this, the EU introduced the Global Gateway in 2021, aimed at providing a viable alternative in this area. This initiative, aligned with the vision of a “geopolitical commission” proposed by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, seeks to demonstrate the EU’s commitment to high standards, norms, and reliability in global connectivity. Through the Gateway, the EU aspires to position itself as a more trustworthy and sustainable partner in infrastructure development.

Given that both initiatives aim to shape global infrastructure, important questions arise: How do the Global Gateway and the BRI interact? How will it impact the future of EU-China relations? As a relatively new project, the Gateway and its relations with other comparable initiatives have not yet been the subject of extensive study. This paper aims to fill this research gap by comparing these two strategic moves through an analysis of their latest objectives and instruments. Grounded in the Grand Strategy Theory, this study seeks to uncover whether the Gateway offers a complementary path in infrastructure development or stands as a competitive alternative. Furthermore, this analysis will provide a deeper understanding of the nature of major power relations—cooperation or competition—in an increasingly fragmenting world.

This paper aims to theorize the understudied, deep transformation, of development aid, particularly the financialization and securitization of aid as the EU navigates global geopolitical shifts, such as competition with China and Russia, and environmental security concerns translated in the drive for critical raw materials necessary for green transitions. Although a strong belief in the potential of private capital to finance development has come to prevail, there is a remarkable lack of research on the extent to which it has shaped European development policy. The European Union (EU) has carried out an extensive, long-awaited, reform of its Financial Architecture for Development, thereby turning to new financial instruments translated into the Global Gateway strategy. These reforms appear to reflect the emergence of a new global consensus on development policy, labeled the ‘Wall Street Consensus’. This paper examines to what extent both the resources and imbursement of EU aid are financialized by (1) proposing a theoretically informed and operationalized framework for studying the financialization of aid, and (2) providing a comprehensive application onto EU aid by examining decisions in Europe and impact in developing countries in the period 2019-2024. The methodology involves mixed methods and mostly qualitative analysis, although some quantitative data will also be examined. This encompassing approach will lead to innovative findings on an understudied research topic, facilitate further empirical and theoretical research, and contribute to wider societal debates on the increasingly relevant phenomenon of financialization of aid.