Brussels on the Silk Road: The EU's Strategic Interest in the Middle Corridor

Introduction 

Trains, ports, and pipelines have quickly become central instruments of European Union (EU) diplomacy. Nowhere is this clearer than in the recent Luxembourg summit, where the EU brought together representatives and foreign ministers from EU member states, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Türkiye, Ukraine, and Central Asian nations (European Commission, 2025a). This summit placed the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route (TITR), or Middle Corridor (MC), at the centre of Europe’s dialogue with the Eurasian region. The recent reconfiguration of Europe’s geopolitical intentions, caused most importantly by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the US-China trade war, and China’s Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI), rendered the Trans-Siberian Corridor (Northern Corridor (NC)) less viable (Rentschler et al., 2025). This disruption has pivoted Europe’s view towards the TITR, a pathway connecting Europe with China through Kazakhstan, the Caspian Sea, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, thus bypassing Russia (Matveeva, 2023).

The EU’s renewed engagement with the TITR is a strategic manoeuvre to diversify crucial energy and critical raw material supply chains, assert geopolitical influence in the region, and establish sustainable diplomatic relations (Rentschler et al., 2025; Bruegel, 2025). Nonetheless, this diplomatic ambition, articulated through the EU’s Global Gateway (GG) initiative, is constrained by limited financing and institutional fragmentation in Central Asian and South Caucasus nations (Valansi, 2025; OECD, 2023).

Map source: © 2022 Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (SWP); data from bakuresearchinstitute.org. Reproduced from EIAS.

Strategic Relevance of the Middle Corridor 

The MC’s importance for the EU is rooted in its potential to diversify current geographical shipping routes and build renewed trust among partner states in the Eurasian region (European Commission, 2025a). The route, which spans around 7000 kilometres, does not pass through Iran and Russia, making it an interesting option for businesses wary of sanctions and political instability (Valansi, 2025). This realignment emphasises the need for alternative corridors that increase supply chain possibilities while reducing dependence on Russian infrastructure through the NC (Valansi, 2025).

For the EU, the corridor offers secure access to crucial markets, including energy and critical raw materials. For instance, Kazakhstan, which has 18 of the 34 critical raw materials, including rare earth materials and lithium, deemed essential by the EU, signed an agreement in 2022 with the EU about sustainable raw material supply chains (Zipatolla, 2025). Additionally, the Russia-Ukraine conflict provides Central Asian and Caucasus nations with a unique opportunity to reconfigure their international postures away from Russia and adopt a more neutral stance to increase their strategic autonomy (Matveeva, 2023). Therefore, the MC can serve as a connection in which both the EU and South Caucasian and Central Asian nations can benefit.  

Europe’s Initial Engagement 

The EU’s commitment to pursuing the MC is articulated through its GG initiative, which boosts smart, clean, and secure connections in digital, energy, and transport sectors, aligned with the UN 2030 agenda and its sustainability goals (European Commission, 2025b). Particularly in the course of 2022, Europe has stepped up its engagement in the region as Central Asian leaders welcome an increased EU role due to the Russian invasion and the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, as it created security concerns and raised concerns about regional stability (Matveeva, 2023).

This intent was formalised at the Global Gateway Investment Forum in Brussels in January 2024, where European and international financial organisations committed to invest 10 billion dollars in the TITR (Zipatolla, 2025). This was followed by an additional 12-billion-dollar investment package for Central Asia, including 3 billion specifically allocated for transport development, and 2.5 billion for critical raw materials (European Commission, 2025c). Through these initiatives, Europe has become the largest aid donor in Central Asia and its largest foreign investor, a strong platform for further partnership (Zipatolla, 2025). 

Diplomatic Potential 

The MC serves as an example of the EU’s commitment to diplomacy through connectivity. By investing in infrastructure, the EU aims to translate economic interdependence to consistent conversations on shared priorities, such as advancing education, cultural understanding, employment, and increasing regional connectivity (Valansi, 2025). This underlines the EU’s Eurasian strategy, recognising that increased cooperation can serve as a buffer to geopolitical risks and gradually counter Russian influence (Rentschler et al., 2025).

The MC simultaneously strengthens Eurasian states’ agency. If states like Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan attract more European investment, they can diversify their economy and profit from both Western and Eastern relations and investments (Matveeva, 2023). This empowers agency for Eurasian states to leverage multiple partnerships while providing a solid entry point for enlarged cooperation for the EU (Matveeva, 2023). Nonetheless, this enhanced agency does not explicitly imply a shift towards the EU, it merely enables Eurasian states to act more independently, decreasing their overreliance on Russia, thereby maintaining the opportunity to keep Russian ties. In this sense, the MC is not merely a practical opportunity for the EU, but a diplomatic one, through which the EU can improve economic interdependence, create a buffer against geopolitical risks, and foster new partnerships.  

[...], the MC is not merely a practical opportunity for the EU, but a diplomatic one, through which the EU can improve economic interdependence, create a buffer against geopolitical risks, and foster new partnerships.

Turning Ambition into Action 

Despite the diplomatic and strategic incentives, the EU’s potential to realise its ambitions in the MC is limited by practical and financial hurdles (OECD, 2023). Logistically, the corridor is not fully developed. For instance, on the China-Kazakhstan border, a track gauge change is required. Moreover, the MC also covers more terrain than the NC, as well as crossing through several nations with different regulatory regimes, which would need to be harmonised (OECD, 2023). More crucially, the MC’s capacity remains limited, handling merely 6 million tons of goods annually, compared to over 100 million tons along the NC (Valansi, 2025). Therefore, significant funding is required to overcome these material limitations, with estimates suggesting 18.5 billion euros are necessary to modernise transport routes on the MC (European Institute for Asian Studies, 2023). 

The EU’s ability to finance this remains doubtful. The European Fund for Sustainable Development (EFSD+) mechanism, which utilises blending instruments to attract private financing, provides almost half of the funding for the TITR project. However, the funding is often uncertain and dependent on EU regulations and ESG standards, which slow down the process due to their complexity. Moreover, the lack of EU presence and weak bilateral relations between the EU and Eurasian states often cause delays, which was made evident in the Team Europe Initiative in 2022 in Tajikistan and Turkmenistan due to fewer embassies and limited local infrastructure (Zipatolla, 2025).

Adding to these complexities are geopolitical risks. If Russia were to achieve a favourable solution in Ukraine, its increased influence might be used to obstruct developments on the MC through overt military operations and more subtle economic means. This would pose a direct geopolitical threat to the EU’s foothold in the region (Avdiliani, 2025). Together, these logistical, institutional, and geopolitical constraints exemplify the difficulties for the EU to realise its ambition on the MC.  

Conclusion 

Overall, the MC presents a remarkable chance for the EU to enlarge its role in the South Caucasus and Central Asia. The EU has thus far taken adequate steps through the GG initiative to improve relations and secure financial investments in transport routes on the TITR. However, the EU must reconcile with institutional, financial, and geopolitical challenges. If these challenges are overcome, the MC can serve as a prime example of effective EU diplomacy. It would demonstrate the EU’s capacity to engage with Central Asia and the South Caucasus in a changing geopolitical world, translating ambition into strategic action. 

---

References 

Avdaliani, E. (2025). The Middle Corridor Remains Supplementary to Major Trade Routes between the EU and China. In Analytical Articles. https://www.cacianalyst.org/publications/analytical-articles/item/13864-the-middle-corridor-remains-supplementary-to-major-trade-routes-between-the-eu-and-china  

Bruegel. (2024, December 11). David and Goliath: The EU’s Global Gateway versus China’s Belt and Road Initiative. https://www.bruegel.org/newsletter/david-and-goliath-eus-global-gateway-versus-chinas-belt-and-road-initiative  

European Commission, Kallas, K., Kos, M., & Síkela, J. (2025a). EU strengthens cross-regional cooperation with Black Sea countries, the South Caucasus and Central Asia. In European Commission - Press Release. European Commission. (2025b, October 17). Global Gateway. In International Partnerships. https://international-partnerships.ec.europa.eu/policies/global-gateway_en  

European Commission. (2025c, April 4). First EU-Central Asia summit. https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/international-summit/2025/04/04/  

European Institute for Asian Studies. (2023). The Middle Corridor. In Briefing Papers. https://eias.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Briefing-Paper-The-Middle-Corridor-Initiative-Where-Europe-and-Asia-Meet.docx.pdf  

Matveeva, A. (2023). A new opening for EU–Central Asia Relations? In Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (pp. 1–16). https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2023/04/a-new-opening-for-eu-central-asia-relations?lang=en  

OECD, Rey, A. S., Brisebard, H., Sevgi, S., Hacibrahimoglu, D., Van De Ven, D., Estienne, B., Arikan, C., Alfonso, F., Chahtahtinsky, A., Larrakoetxea, E., & Poloyko, D. (2023). Realising the potential of the middle corridor. OECD Publishing, Paris. https://doi.org/10.1787/635ad854-en  

Rentschler, J., Reinhardt, A., Elbert, R., Hummel, D., & Technical University of Darmstadt, Chair of Management and Logistics. (2025). The Trans-Caspian Corridor – Geopolitical implications and transport opportunities. In Journal of Transport Geography [Journal-article]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2025.104211  

Valansi, K. (2025). Why the Middle Corridor matters amid a geopolitical resorting. 

Zipatolla, S. (2025). Rethinking EU strategy in Central Asia: Achieving Long-Term Success for the Middle Corridor. In German Council on Foreign Relations (Issue No. 12). https://dgap.org/system/files/article_pdfs/DGAP%20Policy%20Brief_No-12_May2025_EN_0.pdf