As the material basis of globalization, infrastructures are technically vulnerable and politically contested. Their vulnerability is particularly evident in crises such as the global financial crisis or the COVID-19 pandemic, in which transnational capital flows and value chains collapse. Political conflicts over infrastructure unfold in the current new triad competition between the USA, China and the EU. Here, infrastructures are being used to achieve geoeconomic and geopolitical goals, for example through large-scale initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative (China) or Global Gateway (EU). Various disciplines are increasingly focusing their attention on infrastructures as part of an 'infrastructural turn'. This research project contributes to this debate by examining the role and influence of the EU in the global competition for infrastructures. The starting point is the observation that the EU is reorienting its infrastructure policy more strongly outwards and by aiming to control globalization-relevant infrastructures.

The project undertakes a comprehensive analysis of EU infrastructure policy that seeks to examine this reorientation process more closely and to find out why geoeconomic competition translates into diverging strategies in different infrastructure fields. This analysis is split up into case studies in three central infrastructure fields: Transportation, renewable energy and data communication. Three influencing factors are considered in particular: first, the specific geoeconomic competitive pressure in the policy fields; second, the competing design logics of the actors involved; and third, the EU internal constellation of national interests. The results of the case studies will then be compared in a structured manner.

The project aims to contribute to the International Political Economy debate by investigating the transformed, geoeconomically and geopolitically 'charged', mode of operation of infrastructures in the globalization process and by shedding light on the special role of the EU in infrastructure policy competition.