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Paper short abstract

Situated at Moldova’s tri-border with Romania and Ukraine, Giurgiulești has shifted from a peripheral Danube port to a central borderland infrastructure hub, revealing how geopolitical disruptions can rapidly elevate marginal sites to strategic importance.

Paper long abstract

This presentation analyzes Giurgiulești, Moldova’s only port on the Danube, tracing its transformation from a peripheral and corruption-marked outpost into a site of heightened European strategic significance. Completed in 2005 at Moldova’s southernmost tip, the port was originally envisioned as a driver of national economic development but remained marginal for more than a decade. Russia’s war in Ukraine has since reconfigured regional transport corridors, elevating Giurgiulești into a critical logistical node. This rapid shift has generated contestation among local, national, and international stakeholders, each advancing competing visions of the port’s role within an evolving regional connectivity network. In response, EU-funded initiatives have sought to adapt the surrounding infrastructure by repairing broad-gauge rail links to Romania, modifying customs regimes to alleviate road congestion, and adjusting waterways ill-suited to intensified traffic. Drawing on initial interviews with port managers, local officials, and national and international actors, the presentation examines how these cross-border interventions materialize shifting power relations and foreground the frictions inherent in governing geopolitical borderlands. The analysis employs the concept of the chokepoint to illuminate these dynamics. Chokepoints, whether physical crossings or bureaucratic bottlenecks, make infrastructural vulnerabilities and geopolitical tensions legible by concentrating delay, control, and uncertainty (Carse et al., 2019). The turning of the port into a chokepoint exemplifies how peripheral sites can “become” centers through congestion effects produced by geopolitical and geo-economic change. Ultimately, the case reveals the impact of imperial peripherality when formerly marginal locations gain strategic relevance.