A Unified Platform for the Middle Corridor

The Hormuz crisis and the jump in energy prices that followed have shaken already fragile European supply chains that carry goods, energy, and raw materials between Europe and Asia, whether by sea through the Persian Gulf or by land through Russia. The crisis is the latest in a series of disruptions that have forced Europe to find new ways to move energy and goods. Repeated shocks have made the scramble for alternative supply routes an urgent priority for the EU. Brussels has built a strategy and committed itself to bearing costs for safer routes. What it has not done is connect the parts. 

Nowhere is this clearer than in the Middle Corridor, the trade route running east across the Black Sea, the South Caucasus, and the Caspian into Central Asia. Europe has pledged billons of euros in funding and invested real political resources in the corridor, but only about a quarter of the initial pledge has turned into real projects, and no single hand guides the efforts.

The Middle Corridor matters because it avoids both Russia and Iran, and because it is becoming a route for trade that Europe needs. Trade along the Middle Corridor has grown rapidly, rising from 840,000 tons of goods in 2021 to 4.5 million tons in 2024. That is a fraction of what the northern route through Russia carries, but the significance is the direction of travel and the diversification it offers, not the volume. The European Commission expects the volume could triple again by 2030 if the gaps are closed. The aim is to give Europe a route to Asia that is less exposed to any single chokepoint. As Kadri Taştan has noted, each recent crisis has exposed the weak points of the routes the world depends on, and the Hormuz crisis "highlights the growing strategic relevance of the Middle Corridor". 

The EU uses multiple tools to develop the corridor, including funding for ports and railways in Central Asia and the South Caucasus through the Global Gateway Initiative; cooperation with the eastern neighborhood through the Eastern Partnership, a strategic approach for the Black Sea; and the extension of the EU's core transport network, TEN-T. Each of these efforts is a sensible one, and they sometimes reinforce one another, but there is no single mechanism for the EU to decide on next steps for the Middle Corridor. There are several initiatives with roughly aligned goals, but with different mechanisms, pipelines, and budgets. While the EU has the strategy, the funding, and the political will, what it needs is a consolidated approach that brings the pieces and the stakeholders together, and can prioritize projects.

The Three Seas Initiative (3SI), which comprises thirteen EU member states between the Baltic, the Black Sea, the Adriatic, and the Aegean, could serve as a partner. Other strategic partners are the United States, Germany, Italy, and Türkiye, and the associated states Ukraine and Moldova. The 3SI has a pipeline of priority projects across transport, energy, and digital infrastructure and it keeps the United States in the room, which no purely EU framework currently does. 

The 3SI is not an EU body, and its membership only partially overlaps with that of the EU. Brussels cannot, therefore, simply route its connectivity policy through it. But it does not need to: The 3SI already assembles most of the member states where the Middle Corridor reaches Europe, and it maintains the kind of ranked project pipeline the EU's own efforts lack. The EU could treat that pipeline as a shared reference point for the corridor's European end, aligning its own funding through the Commission, the European Investment Bank, and existing instruments with the projects the 3SI has prioritized, rather than spreading it across parallel programs. On that basis, the 3SI should become the EU's main partner for the European end of the Middle Corridor.

A second reason for the 3SI to take that role is that the EU's direct relations with the countries the Middle Corridor runs through are difficult. Accession talks with Türkiye have been frozen for years, Georgia's path toward the EU is suspended, and Azerbaijan has never had one. As Kristina Kausch has underlined, EU officials themselves admit that the bloc's hesitation to engage politically with difficult partners such as Türkiye or Georgia constrains its corridor policy. The 3SI, as a group of governments building infrastructure together rather than an EU body, can include partners the EU's own frameworks cannot. Türkiye is already a strategic partner, something no EU accession framework could deliver in the current climate, and Ukraine and Moldova take part as associated states. Crucially, this openness does not hand anyone a say over European decisions. The 3SI, run by its 13 EU member states, plans and prioritizes the projects, while the EU funds them through its own institutions, with those decisions answerable to all 27.

This is not to say that the 3SI is ready to take on this responsibility without certain prior reforms. The initiative would need to grow into the role. After a decade, it still has no permanent secretariat, so its work stalls between the annual summits. Additionally, its connectivity efforts are disconnected from the EU's. These are real gaps, but they are also precisely the reforms the initiative's own members have been pushing for.

Two decisions would need to be taken, one in Brussels, and one within the 3SI. First, the EU should designate the 3SI as one of its main partners for eastern connectivity. That means that the European Commission would treat the initiative's project list as the reference pipeline for the European end of the corridor and channel its connectivity funding for that stretch. The Commission would also open a standing channel to the initiative's rotating presidency so that coordination continues between summits. Second, the 3SI should establish a permanent secretariat. 

Because standard EU frameworks grant member states influence over funding destinations, some EU countries may resist a flexible 3SI model that reduces their direct control. Convincing them to see this flexibility as a practical tool for regional stability, rather than as a loss of control, is still a much easier task than fixing the EU's frozen relations farther east. 

This approach would be beneficial for both the EU and the 3SI. The EU gains an established platform with the political room to engage partners its own frameworks cannot, while the 3SI secures the institutional recognition and funding it has sought for a decade. This would not sideline the member states outside the initiative, and in any case the biggest of them are already in. Germany, Italy, and Spain sit inside the format as strategic partners, and the same status is open to any EU member state that wants it. The funding would follow EU procurement rules, resulting in open tenders that western European firms are well positioned to compete for, and any arrangement would be endorsed by all 27 with the Commission at the table. The 13 member states would host the platform and the contracts and the oversight would belong to the EU as a whole. Meanwhile, the prospect of anchoring EU funds gives the initiative's members the concrete justification to finally push their internal reforms through. The next 3SI summit, in 2027, would be the natural moment to make this change official. 

The Hormuz crisis will pass, but the next disruption to Europe's trade is a matter of when, not if. Every year the corridor grows without a single platform behind it is another year of overlapping plans and stranded projects. Connecting the pieces that already exist, and funding the whole through one door instead of many, is the cheapest and fastest way to be ready before the next shock arrives.

The views expressed herein are those solely of the author(s). GMF as an institution does not take positions.