When the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor was announced at the G20 New Delhi Summit in September 2023, it was hailed as one of the most consequential infrastructure initiatives in a generation. Presidents, prime ministers, and European Commission heads called it historic. China's analysts were quietly dismissive — noting the BRI's two-decade head start and the IMEC's lack of implementing bodies, committed funds, or a single metre of new track.

Two and a half years later, both the optimism and the scepticism contain truth. IMEC has momentum. It does not yet have infrastructure.

What IMEC Is — And What It Is Not

IMEC is not a single corridor. It is two integrated routes: an eastern corridor linking India by sea to the Arabian Gulf, and a northern corridor extending from the Gulf through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel to the Eastern Mediterranean and onward to Europe by rail and road. Alongside the transportation pillar, the MoU includes energy infrastructure — green hydrogen pipelines, electricity interconnectors — and a digital pillar of subsea fibre-optic cables.

The ambition is genuinely transformative. The Atlantic Council estimates that IMEC could reduce Asia-Europe transit times by approximately 40% relative to the Suez Canal route, generating around $5.4 billion in annual savings for trade travelling the corridor. The potential capacity — 1.5 million TEUs annually by rail, scalable to 3 million — would make it a serious competitor to existing maritime routes.

What IMEC is not, at this stage, is a project. The September 2023 MoU mapped the geography. It did not commit funds, designate a coordinating body, or identify which country would build which segment. In a striking contrast to China's BRI architecture — which deploys policy banks, state construction companies, and bilateral loan agreements as the implementation machinery — IMEC is governed by multilateral sentiment and bilateral goodwill.

The Progress Made

The eastern segment — India to the Arabian Gulf — has made the most tangible progress. India's port infrastructure investment, Gulf state terminal upgrades, and the India-UAE CEPA's trade facilitation provisions have deepened the commercial foundation of this segment. The Blue Raman submarine cable connecting India to Europe via the Gulf is under construction, advancing the digital pillar independently of the more contested rail segments.

The EU-India Free Trade Agreement, signed in January 2026 after nearly two decades of negotiation, has given IMEC fresh strategic impetus. With €124 billion in goods trade and approximately €60 billion in services between India and the EU annually, the FTA creates the commercial scale that justifies IMEC's infrastructure investment. European capitals — competing to be IMEC's western terminal, with Italy's Trieste, Greece's Piraeus, and France's Marseilles all making their cases — have moved from passive endorsement to active investment in the corridor's realisation.

President Trump's re-engagement with IMEC — describing it as "one of the greatest trade routes in all of history" during Modi's February 2025 White House visit — has restored American diplomatic energy to a project that had drifted during the Gaza war's disruption of the Jordan-Israel segment.

The Obstacles Remaining

The central segment — the rail link from the UAE through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Israel — remains the corridor's most contested and least progressed component. The Gaza war froze planning for the Jordan-Israel connection. Restoring the financing, the political will, and the physical planning for this segment requires Middle East stability that the post-war period has only partially delivered.

India's own institutional gap is the second constraint. Unlike China's BRI, which has a dedicated state apparatus, IMEC has no Indian implementing body and no committed Indian government funds. The project started as an Indian initiative — and India has not yet set up the structure to lead it. Gulf states and European partners have been building momentum through their own national programmes. India's leadership role in its own flagship connectivity project risks being hollowed out by its institutional absence.

IMEC will not challenge BRI on BRI's terms. China has a 20-year head start, a state-backed financing machine, and 150 countries already integrated into its framework. What IMEC can do — and what India must work to ensure it does — is establish a commercially credible, politically legitimate alternative for the countries that want one. That requires India to move from announcing IMEC to building it.

The Hind covers policy, power, and strategic affairs from India's perspective. Views expressed are analytical and editorial.