China's Belt & Road Initiative in the EU: perceptions, differences and influence on the example of Germany and Italy

Abstract

In 2013, the Chinese government announced the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) with one of the major goals to improve connectivity across Eurasia. China has been signalling to the EU member states they are welcome to joint activities on BRI. This paper focuses on analysing China’s recent initiative by explaining EU perspectives and the role of the BRI by example of Italy and Germany, i.e. two major EU economies. The results show that there are significant differences in perception of the BRI within these economies. While Italy has followed the CEE countries, which fully support BRI at both government and corporate level and record many investments, Germany has been much more sceptical, especially at the government level. Although China is making large investments in Germany, BRI has yielded no tangible investment activities there. Rather, BRI activities related to Germany have remained limited to railway operation projects connecting Germany and China.