This year’s European Development Days were a chance to talk about whether the European Commission’s new “Global Gateway” investment strategy is a Belt-and-Road-rivaling gamechanger, or just preexisting money and “heroic assumptions.” In the face of the skeptics, the medium is the message. After years of calls from pundits and the European Union’s own member states to boost the reputational return on the EU’s combined annual development spend of almost €70 billion ($73.7 billion), one of the commission’s internal targets this year is to see 100 media articles on the Global Gateway concept. To wit …
Those looking to understand what the Gateway is in theory have the December 2021 policy that promises a “values-driven” infrastructure strategy that will “mobilize” €300 billion in investments by 2027. Those looking to understand what it means in practice came to the EDDs, held in a hybrid format near Brussels’ famous Atomium this week, hoping for answers.
The temperature rose Tuesday when Reinhard Bütikofer, a German Greens member of the European Parliament, told Jean-Letitia Saldanha, the director of Eurodad, a European NGO network working on debt and development, that she had not done her homework when she referred to a lack of transparency over the Gateway and how it would be funded.