One of the core goals of the European Economic Security Strategy is "promoting the EU’s technological edge in critical sectors". Aimed at channelling the EU’s external strategic investment, the Global Gateway can be seen as part of such effort, mirroring China’s use of its Belt and Road Initiative to foster third countries’ reliance upon Chinese tech providers and standards. This memo argues that one of the novelties of the Global Gateway is that it specifically aims to articulate a close collaboration with European business actors. More specifically, the Global Gateway represents an attempt to build "governed interdependence" (Weiss, 1995), namely a collaborative relationship between public and private actors pursued for mutual benefit but ultimately governed by public objectives. Building on recent debates on geoeconomics and the so- called "new economic statecraft", the memo discusses the extent to which the EU is showing an ability to harness business power to attain its economic security objectives, and how can such an approach be squared with establishing win-win partnerships with third countries. Empirically, the paper focuses on energy and climate cooperation, which accounts for about 40 per cent of the existing Global Gateway projects, most notably on clean hydrogen, where the EU aspires to become a global leader, and on critical materials, one of the areas that encapsulates the vulnerability of the EU economy in the new geopolitical and technological context.
