The EU’s strategy for connecting Europe and Asia is greener and more sustainable than China’s “Belt and Road Initiative”, but there remains scope for the two sides to work together, a senior European official said on Friday.
Speaking in an interview on the sidelines of the second Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic said the European Union would be happy to increase its cooperation with Beijing as long as it could improve the transparency of its grand plan for boosting trade and infrastructure. «For us, connectivity is a little bit wider than the concept covered by the belt and road,” he said of the EU’s global development ambitions. “We focus on sustainable financing, avoid debt traps and always do our due diligence. We are also very careful about environmental assessments and the impact [of projects] on the public.»
