Keywords

Introduction

At the turn of the millennium, development policy appeared to witness its “end of history” moment, to borrow Fukuyama’s (in)famous phrase. The United Nations’ Millennium Declaration and its eight Millennium Development Goals were strongly influenced by a document issued by the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the OECD a few years before (OECD/DAC, 1996). The 9/11 terror attacks only added to the Western world’s resolve to strengthen international development cooperation, at that time characterized by growing budgets and a stronger appetite for reform and collective action. The members of the OECD and like-minded international organizations made efforts to promote a “social contract” for development through subsequent high-level fora on aid effectiveness. From 2005 to 2011, dedicated efforts were made to involve emerging countries and their expanding international cooperation efforts, which in all their diversity are referred to as South–South Cooperation (SSC).

Two decades further on, the situation looks markedly different and the international competition for influence—referred to as “the politics of generosity” by the EU’s High-Representative for foreign and security policy (Borrell, 2020)—continues to increase. Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, the development policies of OECD members increasingly emphasize “mutual benefits” in their policy statements (Keijzer & Lundsgaarde, 2018) and more explicitly focus on promoting own interests in addition to developing country benefits. These policy shifts have been described as the “southernization” of development policy (Mawdsley, 2018).Footnote 1

Among the clearest indications of this southernization was the launch of the European Union’s Global Gateway, a policy initiative announced by the European Commission President in September 2021 in her annual policy speech to the European Parliament. During this policy speech, she positioned the initiative as a direct response to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) as follows:

We are good at financing roads. But it does not make sense for Europe to build a perfect road between a Chinese-owned copper mine and a Chinese-owned harbour. We have to get smarter when it comes to these kinds of investments.

This is why we will soon present our new connectivity strategy called Global Gateway. (Von der Leyen, 2021, p. 15)

This chapter describes the genesis and implementation of Global Gateway to date, and critically reviews the initiative in relation to similar policy debates in Germany and Korea. It first looks into the literature on the “southernization” of the OECD members’ development policies. It subsequently discusses Global Gateway and the EU policy discussions from where it sprang, in reference to similar policy discussions in German and Korea.

The Southernization of Development Policy

Germany was one of the founding members of the DAC in 1961. Korea joined the Committee in 2010, almost half a century later and in a very different time and age. At that time, one year had passed since the Lehman Brothers Bank filed for bankruptcy and signalled the start of the global economic and financial crisis. In the period leading up to this crisis, efforts were made by the OECD to increase cooperation with the group of “emerging donors”, principally China and India as leading SSC providers, seeking to promote convergence between their policies and practice and those promoted by the DAC members (Mawdsley, 2018). The trio of High-Level Fora on Aid Effectiveness, held in Accra (2008), Busan (2011) and Paris (2005), served as key moments to promote this convergence, particularly with discussions in the run-up to Busan seeking to “enlarge the tent” of those subscribing to the development effectiveness agenda’s principles and objectives. The efforts were however largely unsuccessful, with the Busan outcome document including a non-committal reference to SSC providers applying the agreed principles on a voluntary basis (Eyben & Savage, 2013).

Instead of the desired convergence of SSC policies and practices to those of the OECD, subsequent years showed a weakening of the latter group’s efforts towards collective action and norm setting in relation to development policy. The financial crisis led to far-reaching austerity measures and a strong pressure on development to prove its worth and “value for money”. Discussions on the introduction of private sector logics under the label of results-based management took further root and represented development cooperation in a more predictable and controllable manner than was hitherto the case (see Holzapfel, 2016). In parallel, the development policies of OECD members became gradually more integrated into and part of foreign policy. This integration had two effects: first of all it promoted a more symptom-focused and crisis-oriented use of development funding, and secondly development policies began to formally express the pursuit of mutual interest as an objective. This is not to say that development policy had not been a foreign policy tool since the creation of the DAC in the 60s, but rather that—exceptions notwithstanding—it was new for the countries concerned to adopt policies explicitly stating that development funds should also be used to promote their own interests (Keijzer & Lundsgaarde, 2018).

This process of southernization has also been described as a return to policies and approaches that were dominant in previous decades, with 2000 to 2008 considered an exceptional period in the longer history of OECD development policy (Bergmann et al., 2019). Notwithstanding this perspective, recent years do show important European discursive and practice trends that suggest a more fundamental reorientation—with most OECD members, including the EU, stating a desire to move away from “donor–recipient relations” and “from aid to investment”. Recent German development policy statements regularly feature these points of emphasis, while for Korea they have been a feature of its “bridge builder” identity as an OECD member throughout. As the next section discusses, ongoing changes in the EU’s development policy provide important points of reference to both countries.

The Emergence of the Global Gateway Initiative

In April 2009, the European Commission published a policy proposal (a “Communication” in EU-speak) that proposed 28 measures to support developing countries in coping with the global economic financial crisis. One key measure concerned using ODA grants to “leverage” soft loans, which the EU expected would help developing countries finance critical infrastructure. Two years later, the European Commission’s discourse in this area began to shift and spoke of the use of “innovative financial instruments, including under facilities for blending grants and loans” (EC [European Commission], 2011, p. 4) while emphasizing that this would not weaken its overarching poverty reduction objective.

At that time, dedicated trust funds and regional “platforms” had been set up and were promoting such blended finance, while remaining under the radar and not yet attracting much political attention. This changed in 2016 when the Commission proposed an “External Investment Plan” that brought together the regional platforms under a single roof with a stronger focus on promoting external investment and creating jobs—the latter linked to the EU’s desire to address so-called root causes of migration to Europe (Lundsgaarde, 2017). During this same period, in 2016, the EU had adopted a Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy, which stated that the EU’s development policy should become more flexible and aligned with its strategic interests. This followed and was followed by EU policy statements acknowledging the need to “differentiate” between different developing countries, with mutual interests being a legitimate focus of cooperation with “more advanced” developing countries (Bergmann et al., 2019).

A year after the External Investment Plan had been launched, EU ministers discussed elements for a Europe–Asia Connectivity Strategy, which sought to promote a “sustainable, comprehensive and rules-based approach to connectivity” (EC/EEAS, 2018). Following the European Parliament elections of 2019, the incoming European Commission leadership was lobbied to extend this regional strategy to one promoting connectivity in the world as a whole, thus competing with China’s Belt and Road. The new leadership was lukewarm to the idea, while the Commission’s Directorate General responsible for development policy advised against publishing the proposal (Bermingham, 2023). The document was thus prepared but not published, while the global pandemic meanwhile required attention to be focused on more immediate short-term measures. By the summer of 2021, EU foreign ministers nonetheless called for the development of an EU connectivity strategy that should be tabled by the spring of 2022 and should build on several existing strategies, including the EU’s Asia–Pacific Strategy, as agreed by the ministers earlier that year (EC [European Council], 2021). In their statement, the ministers acknowledged that a “geostrategic approach to connectivity” would require both changing and combining the EU’s economic, foreign, security and development policy objectives (EC, p. 2). In part because its proposal was already drafted, the Commission decided, however, to move faster and presented its Global Gateway Initiative much sooner, in December 2021 (EC/EEAS, 2021).

A key source of confusion (or debate) in the run-up to its publication was to what extent the strategy stressed the uniqueness of the EU’s approach to infrastructure financing and its underlying value (stressing a “positive offer”), and to what extent the initiative sought to directly compete with China’s BRI. While initial communication (including by the Commission President) emphasized the need to compete with China, the published proposal did not once mention the country. The question remained therefore whether the EU was seeking to beat China at its own game, or would provide a compelling alternative approach. The proposal was nonetheless clear in acknowledging the EU’s own interests as a key driver:

In assisting others, the EU will also be contributing to the promotion of its own interests, to strengthening the resilience of its supply chains, and to opening up more trade opportunities for the EU economy, in which approximately 38 million jobs are dependent on international trade. (EC/EEAS, 2021, p. 2)

As a consequence of the timing of its publication, the EU’s proposal appeared at an inconvenient time in budgetary terms. The EU runs with seven-year multiannual financial frameworks that set the overall focus and limits of its annual budgets. The Global Gateway Initiative was announced at a time when the EU’s external spending for 2021–2027 had already been prepared, including indicative budgets for 2021–2024. This, combined with Global Gateway’s overarching target of mobilizing EUR 300 billion in external investment, attracted considerable attention to the question of whether the initiative would generate new investment or was just another way of presenting and communicating already ongoing activities. This setting may explain why, despite frequent appearances in speeches, more than a year passed before the initiative took further shape. Some ongoing projects were soon associated with Global Gateway, such as prominent investment in vaccine production facilities in various African countries. The summit between the African Union and the EU in February 2022 saw the announcement of a general Global Gateway Investment Package that would seek to meet half the EUR 300 billion investment target. The start of Russia’s war against Ukraine a few days later, however, would absorb much of the EU’s political priorities during subsequent months, although in June 2022 the G7 did adopt its Partnership on Global Infrastructure and Investment, with an overall USD 600 billion target—with the EU thus contributing to the realization of half this target.Footnote 2 In subsequent months, Global Gateway regularly featured in the EU’s political discourse, yet there was little new information to convey.Footnote 3

This lack of progress in Global Gateway changed in the run-up to the first meeting of EU foreign ministers as members of the Global Gateway Board on 11 December 2022. Interventions made by the ministers during this meeting contributed to the selection of flagship projects where quick results could be expected, which in turn led to the publication of basic information on these projects in early 2023. Although the proposal explained which instruments and resources would be made available, including up to EUR 18 billion in ODA grants, the increasing emphasis on flagship projects from late 2022 onwards raised confusion as to whether the initiative was principally about investment or (development) projects. Later in 2023, two key advisory groups were also created, namely a Business Advisory Group and a Civil Society and Local Authorities Dialogue Platform. The latter platform first met on 25 October 2023, a day before the first Global Gateway Forum was convened that attracted heads of state and other high-level officials from the EU and its partner countries to Brussels. This forum was held a week after China convened its third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, the timing once more underlying the suggestion of competition between the two policy frameworks. Rather than reporting on the progress made towards the EU’s overarching investment target, the Commission President instead emphasized that the EU had committed EUR 66 billion to the various projects, adding that almost half of this amount would be in the form of grants—a considerably higher amount than the EU 18 billion initially highlighted in the proposal (Von der Leyen, 2023).

Notwithstanding this discussion on the financing of Global Gateway, the associated “input confusion” and its slow and unconvincing start, the initiative’s effect on the EU’s long-term policy orientation and its external perception should not be underestimated. First of all, the frequent mention of the initiative by the leadership of the European Commission should be acknowledged, given that development policy has typically been a low salience topic for the EU for a long time. The renaming of the development policy portfolio to “international partnerships” by the Commission leadership in December 2019 was already pointing towards this reorientation. Since the policy proposal was published, few speeches by European Commissioners on international cooperation have failed to mention Global Gateway, while the initiative was also given considerable attention in the summits with the African Union (2022) and Latin America and the Caribbean (2023).

Conclusion: Implications for Germany and Korea

The Global Gateway initiative sets itself apart from earlier EU policy initiatives through the stronger integration with broader foreign and commercial policy interests, while also explicitly setting out the “domestic” economic interests that the country should promote. Paradoxically, while seen as a case of “southernization” this explicit focus on own interests in fact sets it apart from southern cooperation actors—notably China and its Belt and Road Initiative—where such interests are not articulated but instead merely implied. This difference may in part be explained by the aforementioned influence of results-based management and the accompanying austerity-driven policy debates in OECD members on specifying the concrete results and benefits of the use public funding. The use of ODA more specifically also necessitates a strong focus on scrutinizing all objectives—i.e. in this case not the developing country benefits alone but also the EU’s so-called return on investment.

Korea and Germany stand out from other DAC members in being known for having developed strong competencies in terms of cooperation with the private sector and in promoting investment more generally, in the case of Korea within the wider Asian region and, for Germany, through its G20 Compact with Africa initiative.Footnote 4 Typically these have been of either a thematic or regional focus, as opposed to being motivated by a global connectivity perspective such as with the EU and Chinese initiatives. Both Germany and Korea also face the challenge of considerable institutional fragmentation of their development cooperation systems, with both the EU and Chinese initiatives being more top-down driven initiatives. A related policy consideration is to what extent Korea and Germany would welcome a stronger focus on infrastructure investment in their bilateral cooperation portfolio, given that they additionally have multilateral actors (and in Germany’s case: the EU) at their disposal.

In the event that similar such high-level infrastructure initiatives with an explicit “mutual benefit” motivation would be considered by either Germany or Korea, then it should be acknowledged that such initiatives will also have a strong influence on accountability patterns and societal debate as to the objectives and expected results of development policy. Such initiatives should thus be designed in close dialogue with different development policy stakeholders within Korean and German societies, so as not to unintentionally widen the gap between the public perception and actual practice of development cooperation. It is this underlying societal and political support that sets such initiatives apart from investment initiatives managed by SSC providers that OECD members may claim (not) to compete with. Such broad-based support is also needed, as effective and lasting investment in infrastructure takes considerable time to plan and conclude, which is why care should be taken to avoid such initiatives being associated with specific (coalitions of) political actors.