Dragon at the gates of Belmont
Obstacles to using Poland as a gateway for the rail component of the Belt and Road Initiative in light of geopolitical developments and shifting European Union policy towards China
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21390989 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jakub Kociubiński (0000-0002-4391-7439, University of Wrocław), Gavin Rae (0000-0001-7330-840X, Kozminski University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 87 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 77-100 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-30 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Ruch Prawniczy Ekonomiczny i Socjologiczny (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0035-9629 • E-ISSN: 2543-9170 |
| Publisher | Adam Mickiewicz University Poznan (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.14746/rpeis.2025.87.2.05 |
| OpenAlex | W4412996637 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 32 |
An important element of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) involves the construction of rail links between China and the European Union (EU). Despite the geopolitical fallout from the ongoing war in Ukraine, the route through Russia, Belarus, and onward to Poland presently constitutes the only viable overland route from China to the EU. In this context, this paper aims to answer the question of whether such actions by Member States may constitute a breach of obligations arising from membership in the European Union, and consequently whether EU law may pose an obstacle to the development of individual trade relations with China by Member States outside the institutional and legal framework of the Union. In this study, on the one hand, programme documents and EU law relevant to the issue presented were analysed, and on the other hand, the geopolitical and operational considerations of rail links between the EU and China were examined. The authors, being aware of the politicization of the subject, concluded that EU State aid law instruments could successfully be used to block infrastructure investments designed to facilitate the reception of Chinese freight traffic if such an impulse were to arise at the political level
Business · Component (thermodynamics) · Economics · Economy · European union · Gateway (web page) · Geography · Geopolitics · International trade · Political science · Politics · Regional science · Computer Science · Cross-Border Cooperation and Integration · European Politics and Security · Globalization, Economics, and Policies · Law · Public Administration
Spillovers and the Locational Effects of Public Infrastructure
Türkiye's Middle Corridor and China's BRI
Is the China Effect Real? Ideational Change and the Political Contestation of Chinese State-Led Investment in Europe
Resistant to Change? The EU as a Normative Power and Its Troubled Relations with Russia and China
EU external policy coherence in the trade-foreign policy nexus
The Belt and Road Initiative as Epochal Regionalisation
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |