EditKazakhstan to EU: Let’s both cut the red tape – Central Asia’s infrastructure window is closing fast
Despite the political goodwill and the complementary fit with the EU’s Global Gateway and TEN-T strategies, implementation lags behind
At a public event marking ten years of the EU–Kazakhstan Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, Ambassador Roman Vassilenko delivered a polite but pointed message to European officials and financiers: the opportunities in Central Asia are real, massive, and time-sensitive – and Europe would be wise, and welcome, to move much faster.
“Almost two years ago in Brussels at the first investor’s forum for connectivity in Central Asia €10 billion were pledged as investment while an EBRD study identified €18.5 billion of high-priority hard and soft infrastructure projects across the region,” Vassilenko recalled. “As of today, the EBRD has signed loans for Kazakhstan-based infrastructure projects worth $800 million and the EIB €200 million. We have started – but we have only just started.”
His point was unmistakable: while European institutions review feasibility studies and environmental impact assessments, other global players – notably China – are building ports, railways and logistics hubs at breakneck speed.
A market Europe cannot afford to miss
Kazakhstan already accounts for 90 % of the EU’s trade with Central Asia ($50 billion in 2024) and supplies 13 % of the Union’s crude oil and 16 % of its uranium. European companies have poured more than $200 billion into the country since independence, and 4,000 of them operate profitably on the ground.
Yet the real prize now lies in the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route – the Middle Corridor. Cargo volumes surged 62 % year-on-year in 2024 to 4.5 million tons and are projected to hit 5.2 million tons this year. Astana plans to double capacity to 10 million tons by 2028 and has already committed $15 billion of its own money by 2030 for new rail links to China and Afghanistan, 13,000 km of modernised highways, and a fully digital “smart cargo” platform.
Vassilenko welcomed the recent lifting of all transit restrictions across Azerbaijan to Armenia – demonstrated by the first Kazakh grain shipments reaching that neighbour – and stressed that connectivity is turning into a genuine instrument of peace in the South Caucasus.
The bureaucracy bottleneck
Despite the political goodwill and the complementary fit with the EU’s Global Gateway and TEN-T strategies, implementation lags behind.
“Lengthy feasibility studies are of course necessary,” the Ambassador acknowledged, “but our call is to accelerate every stage as much as possible. The market demand is there today, it will be there tomorrow, and we need to capture the moment.”
He pointed to the €10 billion pledge made at the 2024 EU–Central Asia Investors Forum and the 2023 EBRD report as concrete roadmaps that remain to be implemented in full. European institutions are “catching up”, he said, but the pace must shift from glacial to urgent.
Critical Raw Materials and Green Transition
Kazakhstan can already supply 21 of the 34 elements listed in the EU Critical Raw Materials Act – and, in fact, already supplies copper, chromium, titanium, beryllium, tantalum, manganese to Europe – with major new deposits in the pipeline. The 2024-2025 roadmap with the EU and the inclusion of the Sarytogan graphite project in the Union’s list of strategic initiatives show that both sides are serious. Turning promises into operating mines and processing plants, however, will again require faster permitting and financing.
Oil, uranium and the Russian route that still works
Vassilenko was careful to underline continuity: nearly 95 % of Kazakhstan’s almost 80 million tons of annual oil exports still flow to Europe via the Caspian Pipeline Consortium (CPC) to Novorossiysk – a route that has remained untouched by Western sanctions for four years because it carries predominantly Kazakh, not Russian, oil.
“We are working to add extra capacity via the Middle Corridor,” he noted, “but the CPC remains the artery that keeps Europe supplied. It needs to stay protected.”
The bottom line
Kazakhstan is not asking for charity or political favours. It is offering a stable, reform-minded partner at the heart of Eurasia with world-class resources, a growing logistics hub, and a government that is investing tens of billions of its own dollars. Ambassador Vassilenko’s message could not have been clearer: Europe has the money, the technology and the strategic interest. Central Asia has the resources, the geography and the political will. All that is missing is speed.
Caption: Ambassador Roman Vassilenko in Press Club Brussels Europe, on 24 November 2025 [Embassy of Kazakhstan on X]
Updated: November 25, 2025 - 07:22
