PNN – The European Union Commissioner for Development and International Cooperation said: In a situation where Beijing is working quickly in the field of providing the necessary investment in the infrastructure sector of the countries of the global South, the European Union is facing the challenge of dealing with China’s growing influence in the world.
According to Pakistan News Network’s report on Sunday, the Financial Times quoted Jutta Urpilainen as saying: Bureaucracy and difficult social and environmental conditions in the EU investment system have made it difficult to use strategies to counter China’s “Belt and Road” plan.
He told the Financial Times: We are living in an era of geopolitical competition and we are facing a war of narratives, but most of all we are facing a war of offers.
Orpilinen pointed to China’s commitments about quick investment and quick completion of projects and emphasized that its respective union has not acted quickly in investments, and unlike China in African countries, it has had a more tangible cooperation in the construction of football stadiums, ports, railway lines and roads.
The American Enterprise Institute, a think tank, recently reported that China has invested approximately 1 trillion euros in 152 countries from 2013 to the middle of last year with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). But, after a spike in borrowers defaulted in 2020, its annual budget was cut sharply.
Orpilinen acknowledged that EU partners have also welcomed Beijing’s investment.
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Declaring that Chinese companies often build projects that they themselves finance, he emphasized that the European Union is a better long-term partner.
According to the European Union Development Commissioner, this cooperation of European countries with China has created a great dependence on Beijing among them.
This EU official added: Our goal is to strengthen the flexibility, self-reliance and independence of our [EU] partners, and this is in our interest.
Orpilinen also said that the European project “Global Gate of the European Union”, which is designed to be implemented between 2021 and 2027, seeks to mobilize 300 billion euros of investment in infrastructure projects in low-income countries.
He claimed that the goal of this project is to create international partnerships that prevent recipients from becoming “dependent” on us as donors.
This European official added that poorer countries “tend to have an equal partnership and not just be recipients of aid.”
The GlobalGate project brings together EU development banks, national governments and the European Commission as well as the private sector to invest in infrastructure, mining and other industrial projects.
Orpillainen noted that the EU’s new environmental rules, which have made it more difficult to export products such as cocoa and steel to the union, have caused the union’s partners to distance themselves from it. These include the Stop Deforestation Act, which forces exporters of six commodities, including coffee, palm oil and rubber, to prove they did not grow on newly deforested land.
EU Agriculture Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski and the ministers of agriculture of 20 EU member states have also called for the suspension of this law, which is applied in this block.
With Africa expected to have a population of 2.5 billion by 2050, compared to about 450 of our population in the European Union, Orpilainen noted, “Improving livelihoods and creating opportunities for African citizens, especially young people, will benefit us.”