Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan are diversifying partnerships. Europe is barely in the conversation.
The EU's engagement with Central Asia remains remarkably thin. Total EU investment in the region is less than €5 billion, a fraction of what China spends in a single year. The EU's 2019 Central Asia Strategy promised enhanced connectivity and rule-of-law support, but implementation has been slow and underfunded.
This is a missed opportunity. Central Asia is rich in critical minerals — rare earths, lithium, uranium — that Europe desperately needs for its green transition. The region's location makes it a natural corridor between European and Asian markets. And its governments, wary of Chinese debt-trap dynamics, are genuinely open to European partnerships.