On January 29-30, 2024, an Investors Forum on Sustainable Transport Connectivity between Europe and Central Asia, within the framework of the EU’s “Global Gateway”, will be held in Brussels. The Forum, which is organized by the European Commission, is expected to be attended by representatives of the public and private sector, investors and financial institutions.
The Forum aims to kick-start the process for implementing and coordinating investments along the Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor by following up on specific actions identified in the Study. Notably, this will involve mobilising investors on specific projects, with concrete and realistic timelines and financial commitments.
The European Commission has drawn up a tentative prioritised list of “project baskets”, categorising the 33 infrastructure projects recommended in the Study; the list ranks projects by level of maturity and feasibility in three groups/baskets. The Commission is now engaging with organisations that are showing an interest in participating in the Forum to explore their readiness to make contributions to specific projects in the short, medium and long term.
The Investors’ Forum takes forward the conclusions of the EU-commissioned Study on Sustainable Transport Connections between Europe and Central Asia by contributing to the long-term objective of making the Trans-Caspian Transport Corridor a multimodal, modern, competitive, sustainable, predictable, smart and fast route linking Europe and Central Asia in 15 days, or less.
The study had two objectives:
a) Identifying the most sustainable transport corridors connecting the five Central Asian republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan) with the EU’s extended Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T), following a corridor assessment based on a strict sustainability criteria where environmental, social, economic, fiscal/debt sustainability as well as political viability would be taken into account.
b) Proposing key actions for corridor development – in terms of both physical infrastructure (hard connectivity) and enabling environment (soft connectivity), including their prioritisation based on a coherent and sustainable transport corridor development approach.
Like-minded countries such as Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Türkiye as well as the “Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank” have been invited to the Forum.