CER, EIM, and Unife want to extend the initiative until the end of 2022 due to disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Against the prevailing narrative of the The Belt and Road as a top-down strategy to spread China’s geopolitical influence, there is the BRI’s impact through its first decade as emanating «from the middle out and bottom up» via transport-enabled corridors traversing a large number of regions within and across national territories.