Internal tensions and economic opportunities: Explaining the heterogeneous stance of EU Member States towards the Belt and Road Initiative

The European Union is one of the key destinations of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), officially announced by Chinese president Xi Jinping in 2013. Nevertheless, the EU has mixed feelings about it: while recognizing the initiative’s capability to foster economic growth, it is still reluctant to participate, regarding the BRI as a challenge to European unity, norms and values. Regardless of the official stance of the European Commission, the EU member states have adopted a wide range of heterogeneous stances towards the BRI, ranging from an enthusiastic acceptance of the initiative to a refusal to join it. This paper will shed light on the driving factors behind this wide range of attitudes towards the BRI, focusing not only on the economic opportunities posed by the initiative to the main member states, but also on their relationship with the EU and the possible internal tensions with the European Commission. The joint examination of these two variables will provide a better explanation of EU member states´ stance towards the BRI than those analyses based merely on the explanation of economic factors. In fact, the main finding of this paper is that political factors outweigh the economic ones: there is no correlation between the economic opportunities offered by the initiative and the support it gets from beneficiary member states, while internal tensions inside the EU are encouraging some member states to join the initiative even though there might not be many economic benefits granted by their participation.