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Paper long abstract:

The paper focuses on assessing the existing experience of capital infrastructure investment projects (megaprojects) developed under the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the regions of central eastern Europe and southeastern Europe, with the emphasis on the lessons learned from the projects themselves. Findings of the paper are to serve as guidelines for future development of BRI projects, regardless of where they are implemented.

For the purpose of this paper, research has been conducted into effectiveness and efficiency of successful management of megaprojects located in the markets of CEE and SEE. A comparison has been made between megaprojects developed under the BRI portfolio and similar ones developed by European supported stakeholders. The goal of the research was to outline and map the roots and causes of inefficiency of BRI megaprojects, with the main focus on their cost and schedule overruns. Once key reasons for the inefficiency have been outlined, a proposal is provided on how to address their improvement through usage of modern project management tools. A specific tool, often applied and supported by European Union funding has been discussed and analyzed.

Acknowledging the impact BRI has made in Europe up to 2020, adding to it the 2020/2021 geopolitical ripple effect of the covid19 pandemic on global business, the future effect of the current Russia - Ukraine situation, and finally scaling it up on the future implementation it can have on the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) market through RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership), findings of this paper have both an academic and market value. The research findings are equally valuable to future BRI megaprojects' host countries as well as Chinese stakeholders as the assessment is conducted from the strictly scientific and unbiased perspective.

The information and data used in this paper is a result of research activities conducted by the author and supported by the European Commission funded project CHERN – China in Europe Research Network (COST Action 18215).