It’s not just geopolitics, stupid! Development, retroliberalism, and the EU’s Global Gateway

This article argues that the Global Gateway, rather than marking a paradigm shift, consolidates the retroliberal turn in the EU’s external action that began in the early 2010s. Drawing on primary sources and targeted interviews, it delineates the contested genesis of the Global Gateway, which helps explain early ambiguities and delays in implementation, and exposes the shortcomings of geopolitical interpretations that can offer only partial insights into its diverse underlying logics. More specifically, it finds that the geopoliticisation of the Global Gateway, advanced initially by the EEAS and subsequently by the European Commission’s political leadership, faced resistance from development community, particularly with regard to the antagonisation of China. Moreover, it unravels fundamental divisions within DG IntPa, between a managerial faction that promoted investment-oriented strategies advancing donor interests under the guise of mutual benefit and an activist constituency advocating development-focused, recipient-driven interventions.