The Global Gateway Forum 2025: Narratives Shaping Global Connectivity and Multilateral Engagement

Source: European Commission

Commentary by Isabell Raue, Research Assistant, ICES

October 20, 2025

The second Global Gateway Forum in October 2025 highlighted the EU’s attempt to promote a values-driven, multilateral model of global connectivity as a normative alternative to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. While showcasing deepening partnerships, a sustainable agenda, and private-sector mobilisation, comparisons with the Chinese approach and its narrative ambitions also display the need for stronger priorities, visibility, clear norm-based governance, and multilateral engagement.

The second Global Gateway Forum took place in Brussels from October 9 to October 10, 2025, bringing together different high-level representatives from the governments, business, academia, and civil society. It served as a dialogue platform, retrospection and policy showcase for the EU’s flagship connectivity strategy. Panels included themes such as State of the World, Looking at Connectivity through a Geostrategic Lens, and Strategising Partnerships.

The Global Gateway Initiative

The Global Gateway Initiative was launched in 2021 by the European Commission and the EU High Representative. It was implemented to counter the idea that the EU had become a ‘payer but not a player’ globally, to enhance its influence and meet the needs of the receiving countries. It promotes smart, clean, and secure links in five key areas: digital, climate and energy, transport, health, and education and research. These areas are built around the guiding principles of resilience, sustainability, and like-minded partnerships. The initiative “stands for sustainable and trusted connections that work for people and the planet”, aligning closely with the UN’s 2030 Agenda, the Sustainable Development Goals, and the Paris Agreement. In 2025, the Global Gateway surpassed the goal of mobilising 300 billion euros in investments by uniting EU institutions, Member States, development banks, and private investors under the Team Europe approach.

Forums 2025: From Parallel Initiatives to Competing Visions

The implementation of the Global Gateway was not only a reaction to the global infrastructure investment deficit but was also triggered by Chinese efforts under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), launched by President Xi in 2013 to improve economic cooperation and, as analysts have repeatedly noted, to address Chinese overcapacities. The recent forum, four years after the Global Gateway’s implementation, emphasised the progress in establishing clearer themes and enhancing investment structures. This is a small but essential step in response to repeated criticism regarding a lack of coherence, ineffective execution, and limited European resources and unity.

The Belt and Road Forum 2023, this year’s Meeting of their Advisory Council and the Global Gateway Forum in 2025 highlighted how China and the EU are shaping parallel yet increasingly interlinked visions of global connectivity. The Belt and Road Forum emphasised Beijing’s effort to reposition the large-scale BRI as a high-quality cooperation platform, focusing on digitalisation, technology, green finance, and local partnerships. Meanwhile, the Global Gateway Forum projected the EU’s initiative as a values-driven, transparent, and sustainable alternative, centred on rules-based governance and successful private-sector mobilisation through the Team Europe approach. Yet, the forums also revealed growing complementarity between the initiatives, promoting multilateral coordination, green and digital projects, and Global South engagement, as well as a broader contest of norms and overarching visions.

Connectivity Narratives to Shape Multilateralism

The shared vocabulary of “partnerships” and “mutual benefit” comprises a contest for influence, visibility, and norm-setting in a world shifting towards multilateralism. The Belt and Road forums reaffirm China’s long-term ambition to consolidate the BRI as the primary global infrastructure network. Beijing has included and aligned its communication on the BRI with its communication of the Chinese global governance approach, framing it within its inclusive and civilisational, ‘win-win’ narrative. BRI is integrated in the broader framework of the ‘Four Global Initiatives’, projecting China as a guardian of the Global South’s development autonomy. The ‘common development’ and ‘common prosperity’ narrative is part of ‘telling China’s story well’. Beijing’s rhetoric emphasises its pragmatic multilateralism vision, with South-South solidarity and respect for diverging development paths. Addressing the BRI criticisms, it shifted to a portrait of China as a stable, long-term partner in global governance.

The Global Gateway Forum’s theme ‘Advancing global connectivity in the face of geopolitical and geoeconomic challenges’, the background paper ‘Partnerships in a Geopolitical Era: Time for a New Strategic Conversation’, and the launch of the Global Gateway Investment Hub and deepened partnership with the World Bank Group openly acknowledge that the Global Gateway is advancing geopolitical and geoeconomic interests. Surrounding the 2025 forum, the EU has deepened its rhetorical framing of the Global Gateway, linking sustainable investment with transparency, multilateral structures and mutual benefit. Brussels presents connectivity as a normative project, positioning the EU as a trusted partner and implementing projects based on multilateral commitments and multi-actor engagement. This communicative effort displays the European self-reflection as a principled actor in an emerging multilateral world order.

Both narratives highlight different aspects but reveal a rhetorical convergence: although the connectivity initiatives differ in terms of values and communication, they have become platforms for the EU and China to further define multilateralism and their role in the emerging order, and shape profound international partnerships by creating multilateral platforms of cooperation. The narrative competition for standard-setting and norms raises questions about which form of development should be prioritised and how to build mechanisms for responsible coexistence that advance the respective governance norms and partnerships.

Policy Implications

The latest BRI and Global Gateway forums highlighted the increasing competition over influence in global standards and governance models. Against the background of fragmented Western infrastructure finance, the Global Gateway cannot and should not attempt to match the scale of the BRI. However, it could bring meaning by offering value-driven and reliable European governance based on mutually beneficial partnerships at eye level.

For the Global Gateway Forum, the next step should be to consolidate its image as a strategic platform rather than a symbolic gathering with a limited audience and sparse journalistic coverage. To mitigate dependencies, connect with like-minded partners amid the transatlantic divide, and shape multilateralist fora, the European narratives surrounding the Global Gateway must not only be told effectively but must also be heard. To improve its visibility and reception among partner countries, the EU must better define core priorities, communicate tangible results (also in the Member States), and build on its normative strengths. While the latest forum revealed some improvements with regard to priorities and financing, the EU needs stronger internal coordination, a united presence at the forum, and clearer political goal-setting that aims to understand overlapping interests with partner countries and to support their enabling environments.

A coherent, strategically conveyed narrative that aligns EU strengths and geopolitical objectives, understanding the Global Gateway as a structural pillar of multilateral engagement, could improve its recognition as a serious global player. Instead of attempting to compete with China and demanding that receiving countries take sides, the EU should define a clear role and vision that maximises the Global Gateway’s impact and treats the connectivity projects as global goods and shared responsibilities.