Belt and Road Initiative and Possible Implications for Central and Eastern Europe Countries

- Many of the Central and Eastern Europe Countries (CEEC) that are subject to The “16+1” Platform under China’s Belt and Road Initiative, including Romania, are member states of the European Union (EU) and their economic development strategies are implicitly dependent on the European Union’s goals, financing mechanisms and regulations. On the other hand, the CEEC’s geographical position, bridging Asia and Western Europe and their economic potential in the global value and production chain make them indispensable for BRI integration within Eurasia. Furthermore, in a more and more restrictive European context, due to Brexit and the refugee crisis, meeting the financing needs for development and economic growth is crucial for this group of countries in order to ensure their real convergence with the more developed West.In such a context, the present paper aims at bringing a contribution to the following pressing question for Brussels, in terms of geopolitical and economic concerns, namely, whether BRI can become a complementary support instrument to the European policies fostering CEEC’s integration with the West and not a competitive strategy hindering EU’s interests. To this aim, we try to investigate some of the features of specific cases of similar infrastructure investments in CEEC, financed by European funds and within the BRI framework, respectively, in order to have a base for a comparative analysis.