The prospect of a EU-India trade agreement will further cement the importance of the IMEC trade corridor.

Europe and India, chastened by the turbulence of the Trump-era tariffs, have found renewed urgency in bringing their long-negotiated Free Trade Agreement (FTA) toward a conclusion. After a recent call between European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, the latter welcomed what he described as a positive and forward-looking conversation aimed at accelerating both the FTA and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC). 

Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni has played a crucial transatlantic role, working to reinforce both Europe’s partnerships with the United States and India. In her own recent call with Modi, Meloni reiterated the need to conclude the FTA without delay and to push forward with the implementation of IMEC and the Italy-India Joint Strategic Action Plan 2025–2029.

IMEC was launched at the 2023 G20 Summit in India. Eight signatories—India, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Germany, France, the European Union, and the United States—pledged to deepen Indo-Mediterranean trade and commerce and construct a road and rail network across the Gulf Peninsula to buttress the ports and maritime traffic. This new infrastructure was presented as a complement to the Suez Canal, intended to absorb rising volumes of trade while strengthening the resilience of global supply chains.

Leaders in both Europe and India have come to appreciate the transformative potential of IMEC, seeing it as the mechanism that can breathe life into the Global Gateway initiative and Italy’s flagship Mattei Plan. The corridor is also regarded as a powerful accelerator for the EU-India FTA. Figures like Prime Ministers Meloni and Modi and President von der Leyen fully grasp the broader strategic picture, even as cautious commentators get lost in details: the risks posed by Middle Eastern instability, the long timelines for Saudi infrastructure projects, or the absence of dedicated envoys among some of the signatories. These obstacles are real, but they do not negate IMEC’s force-multiplying scope.

The fundamental purpose of IMEC goes far beyond a single rail link across the Arabian Peninsula. It lies in revitalizing Indo-Mediterranean commerce through a network of ports, railways, and sea lanes. For the foreseeable future, shipping routes will continue to carry the bulk of the load. This fact is unlikely to change even after new land transport corridors become fully operational. 

IMEC matters because it provides a framework for increased commercial activity between India and Europe. India is projected to be the world’s fastest-growing large economy over the next decade, while the European Union faces mounting pressure to diversify its economic ties away from China toward India and other like-minded partners. India faces a similar imperative and already counts the UAE and Saudi Arabia among its top five trading partners, along with the United States and China.

IMEC at its core represents converging interests—both economic and strategic—binding together Europe, India, the Middle East, and the United States. President Donald Trump has demonstrated an instinctive understanding of IMEC’s value as a bottom-up, self-interest-driven grouping. He has consistently promoted the initiative in meetings with Indian and European leaders, remarking that he looked forward to “one of the greatest trade routes in all history.” IMEC, therefore, is both a strategic counterweight to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and also one of the rare plurilateral projects that enjoys Trump’s enthusiastic backing.

IMEC’s essential accomplishment is to provide an organizational framework for enhanced coordination across diverse strands of Indo-Mediterranean economic engagement. These include not only the proposed land transport corridors across Saudi Arabia and, in time, Iraq and Turkey, but also the enduring maritime artery of the Suez Canal. To these must be added the Mattei Plan, the Global Gateway, and the long-anticipated EU-India FTA. Taken together, they amount to a more ambitious reconfiguration of Indo-Mediterranean trade than any single route or project could achieve in isolation.

The Mattei Plan, Meloni’s premier foreign-policy initiative, aims to engage African states constructively and support their economic development, thereby reducing the migratory pressures that have destabilized Italian and European politics. Italy has pledged €1.2 billion to fund the plan and has already entered into cooperative agreements with more than a dozen African nations. Prime Minister Meloni is working to integrate the Mattei Plan into all aspects of Italian foreign policy. Once aligned with IMEC, the initiative can achieve far more than bilateral assistance. African nations along the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean coasts, in particular, stand to benefit from integrating into Indo-Mediterranean trade, thereby achieving their ambitions for industrialization and sustained growth. 

The history of the region offers an instructive precedent: Indian and Omani traders once extensively plied the African coast, from Somalia to Mozambique, driving prosperity for coastal states. Today, a combined approach that links the Mattei Plan’s development focus with IMEC’s commercial dynamism promises a multiplier effect greater than the sum of its parts.

For Europe, IMEC represents the most consequential undertaking within the Global Gateway. Brussels launched the Gateway to expand Europe’s connectivity with the developing world. Yet the initiative needs to be further enhanced. Its flagship projects include submarine digital and energy cables across the Black Sea, as well as investments across Africa. On the whole, this should add up to a compelling strategic vision. Throughout history, Indo-Mediterranean trade has been Europe’s primary connection to Asia and Africa. IMEC restores that tradition, positioning the region as the critical juncture linking the Indo-Pacific with the Mediterranean-Atlantic.

For von der Leyen, the Global Gateway is as much a defining priority as the Mattei Plan is for Meloni. IMEC provides the instrument through which both leaders can achieve legacy. The project represents the type of balanced and trusted European connectivity strategy that the EU’s Asia Connectivity Strategy originally envisioned before it was subsumed into the Global Gateway. IMEC offers coherence, impact, and strategic weight, serving as an integrated effort to reconnect Europe with its southern and eastern peripheries. It would be no exaggeration to state that IMEC’s success will be one of the biggest contributors to Global Gateway’s future.  

Momentum is now gathering behind the EU-India FTA, with negotiators expressing confidence that a deal could be signed this year. The agreement is expected to significantly enlarge the current annual trade flow, which in 2024 stood at $120 billion. Both sides will likely seek to elevate their bilateral flows to levels exceeding their individual trade with China. Under such a framework, IMEC will serve as the principal conduit for the expansion, with Indo-Mediterranean routes carrying the lion’s share of new activity.

The Suez Canal will remain the indispensable artery of Indo-Mediterranean commerce, but supplementary land corridors through Saudi Arabia, and eventually across Iraq and Turkey, will add invaluable resilience. The strategic question for Europe concerns geography. Currently, much of Indo-Mediterranean shipping and Europe’s shipping in general terminates in northern ports like Rotterdam, Antwerp, and Hamburg. The fast-growing economies of Central and Eastern Europe, however, could access these flows more efficiently through the Upper Adriatic. 

Italy has already moved to designate Trieste as its leading IMEC port and is considering hosting a foreign ministerial meeting on the corridor in the free port later this year. Brussels may well follow Rome’s lead by designating Trieste and the Upper Adriatic as priority geographies for IMEC and the Global Gateway, positioning them as Central and Eastern Europe’s maritime gateway to Indo-Mediterranean trade.

The wider vision is clear. IMEC has matured into a strategic concept channeling European energy into the revival of Indo-Mediterranean commerce. It reinforces the objectives of the Mattei Plan and the Global Gateway, aligning with the EU-India FTA to create a coherent framework for growth. Above all, it has the rare advantage of enjoying strong political support across capitals such as Washington, Brussels, Rome, and New Delhi.

The forthcoming IMEC ministerial and business forum in Trieste will provide the timely platform for articulating this broad agenda, setting out the scope and scale of coordination required to deliver it. The event will demonstrate that IMEC has evolved into a strategic framework already in motion. It promises to turbo-charge Indo-Mediterranean trade, anchor Europe’s external economic strategy, and establish Trieste and the Upper Adriatic as the new pivot of continental connectivity. 

With these elements in place, IMEC is set to become the decisive force multiplier for Europe’s engagement with both Africa and Asia, and the clearest signal yet that Europe and India intend to write the next chapter of global commerce together.