Team Europe Democracy Initiative - TED

A website for the Global Team Europe Initiative on Democracy. This is an intiative led by DG INTPA, to which 14 MS have joined.

TEAM EUROPE DEMOCRACY – promoting democracy and human rights worldwide

The Team Europe Democracy (TED) Initiative is a global thematic Team Europe Initiative (TEI), launched in December 2021 by the commissioner Jutta Urpilainen to promote democracy and human rights worldwide. 14 EU Member States are involved in TED: Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden. The specific objective is to create a coordinated strategic European response in support of democracy that is effectively steered worldwide by the TED Secretariat, which is composed by staff members of GIZ and Enabel, in close cooperation with the TED Coordinator of DG INTPA.

The TED Initiative has three main pillars: 

1) Research on democracy support best practices and policies

2) TED Network (global level)

3) Providing expertise at country level. 

At the global level, TED will improve the coordination of EU and Member States representatives, through the creation of the TED Network. The TED Network will facilitate exchanging information and engaging in strategic dialogue. It will enhance cross-regional collaboration on democracy support and will support joint initiatives on the TED thematic priorities.

The three priority themes are:

1) Accountability and Rule of Law

2) Political and Civic Participation 

3) Media and Digital.

The TED Network will consist of EU institutions, EU Member States and their implementing agencies, individual civil society organisations or networks, think tanks, research centres and universities based in Europe and engaged in promoting democracy and human rights worldwide. Europe-based multilateral organisations can also join the TED Network. The TED Secretariat will operationalise the TED Network and set up working groups to the three thematic priorities. 

At partner country level, the Team Europe Democracy Initiative will provide expertise through the creation of an experts database to support EU Delegations in implementing and developing TEIs on democracy and/or developing joint actions, with the aim of strenghtening the coordination and complementarity of European interventions for democracy support. 

The long-term expectation of the Team Europe Democracy Initiative is to achieve more visibility for common actions and positions of the EU and Member States on democracy support and human rights.