Integrating the EU’s hinterland through IMEC
“Stretching over 6,400 km, from the Indo-Pacific to the Mediterranean, the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) is an ambitious intercontinental connectivity project. Its eight signatories include the European Union (EU), Germany, France, Italy, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the United States (US)—from three continents. In addition, without being an official signatory, Jordan, Israel, Greece, and Oman are also affiliated with the project due to their geographic location along the route. Other countries are equally interested in getting involved, like Egypt and Cyprus.”
“For instance, connecting the Corridor’s Mediterranean segment with the planned Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T)—expected to be deployed in three phases with a core (by 2030), an extended (by 2040) and a comprehensive (by 2050) network component—can scale up the project’s connectivity potential. TEN-T’s logic strongly correlates with IMEC’s as it is also conceived as a ‘multimodal, and high-quality transport infrastructure’, but with a merely European scope. TEN-T ‘comprises railways, inland waterways, short sea shipping routes and roads linking urban nodes, maritime and inland ports, airports and terminals’. The integration of these two cross-border connectivity ecosystems—subject to infrastructural adequacy and regulatory— facilitates and accelerates commercial exchanges from the Indo-Pacific to the Euro-Atlantic economic zones, throughout the EU’s hinterland.”
https://www.orfonline.org/research/integrating-the-eu-s-hinterland-through-imec