EU stands by Global Gateway advisory roles for firms linked to Beijing

Name: China’s Belt and Road, 10 years on
Uploaded: 2023-11-27T08:20:16.000Z
Duration: 6 min 32 s
Description: China’s Belt and Road, 10 years on

European Commission says companies met criteria to join board advising bloc’s alternative to belt and road scheme

Cross-party MEPs had asked whether firms will be excluded from the group ‘within the context of de-risking from China’

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European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaks at the Global Gateway Forum in Brussels last month. Photo: Reuters

Finbarr Bermingham

Published: 4:20pm, 27 Nov 2023Updated: 4:58pm, 27 Nov 2023

The European Union is standing by its decision to hand Chinese state-linked companies roles advising the bloc’s answer to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, despite a clamour from lawmakers to sever ties.

The European Commission said the companies had been selected according to a set of criteria – including being “under EU control” and whether or not they had links to Russia – and that based on the assessment, there was no need to exclude companies whose biggest shareholders were controlled by the Chinese state.

In October, the Post revealed that Energias de Portugal SA (EDP) was among the companies that will advise the commission on “implementation of the Global Gateway strategy and scaling up of Global Gateway flagship”, even though its largest shareholder, China Three Gorges (CTG), is a Chinese state-owned enterprise.

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China’s Belt and Road, 10 years on

CTG is supervised by the Chinese government’s State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), which is “responsible for carrying out the obligations assigned by the Chinese Communist Party’s Central Committee”, according to Datenna, a Dutch intelligence firm.

Its chairman, Lei Mingshan, was among nearly 2,300 delegates to the Communist Party’s 20th national congress last year.

A second member company, the French satellite firm Eutelsat, also retains Chinese state investment.

In response to the report, the commission said it would check internally how the firms ended up on the advisory board, which is composed of 60 companies and business groups. Subsequently, a group of cross-party members of the European Parliament wrote to the commission asking whether the firms will be excluded from the Global Gateway Business Advisory Group “within the context of de-risking from China”.