Amid the G20 summit taking place in New Delhi, US President Joe Biden has revealed a new project aiming to increase connectivity and reduce transport costs between India and the EU, passing through the Middle East.
The India – Middle East – Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), launched during the event is an agreement signed by the EU, the United States, India, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Corridor will link the three regions through state-of-the-art connectivity infrastructure, helping to bring the economic relationship between them to a new level and providing improved access to goods, energy and data to citizens and businesses.
This is nothing less than historic. (…) This corridor is much more than ‘just’ a railway or a cable, it is a green and digital bridge across continents and civilisations.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission
“It will be the most direct connection to date between India, the Arabian Gulf and Europe, with a rail link that will make trade between India and Europe 40% faster, with an electricity cable and a clean hydrogen pipeline to foster clean energy trade between Asia, the Middle East and Europe, with a high-speed data cable to link some of the most innovative digital ecosystems in the world and create business opportunities all along the way. These are state-of-the-art connections for the world of tomorrow – faster, shorter, cleaner”, said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
The project aims to integrate railway lines and port connections from India to Europe, across UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, leading to smoother and faster transit of goods, develop energy infrastructure and enable the production and transport of green hydrogen to all partners and strengthen telecommunications and data transfers thanks to a new undersea cable connecting the region.
“As we work to address infrastructure gaps across low- and middle-income countries, we need to maximize the impacts of our investments”, said Biden. “[The IMEC is] a project that’s far from just laying tracks. It’s about creating jobs, increasing trade, strengthening the supply chains, boosting connectivity, laying foundations that will strengthen commerce and food security for people across multiple countries.”
The IMEC will be comprised of two separate corridors, the east corridor connecting India to the Arabian Gulf and the northern corridor connecting the Arabian Gulf to Europe. It will include a railway that, upon completion, will provide a reliable and cost-effective cross-border ship-to-rail transit network to supplement existing maritime and road transport routes, enabling goods and services to transit to, from and between India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and Europe.
Along the railway route, the signing countries intend to enable the laying of cable for electricity and digital connectivity, as well as pipe for clean hydrogen export. This corridor will secure regional supply chains, increase trade accessibility, improve trade facilitation and support an increased emphasis on environmental social and government impacts.
No further details were revealed at the summit, with the value of the project or how the investment will be divided between the participatory countries remaining undisclosed. Furthermore, no tentative timeline was announced, giving no indication of when the corridor will be built. However, French President Emmanuel Macron, who also signed the agreement, said their “intention is to make it real and to be sure that after this commitment we have concrete results”.
The announcement of the corridor is part of Biden’s broader ambition of rivalling China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a government project adopted in 2013 through which the country aims to invest in infrastructure development in 150 countries around the world.
