Working Better Together in a Team Europe Approach

Joint implementation involves a wide range of financial and non-financial ways of working together. Joint implementation should cover all parts of the project cycle and the activities around it, including coordination mechanisms and collaborative arrangements.

• Actions involving non-financial means could include: joint sectoral/thematic analysis; joint project identification and formulation; joint policy dialogue during programme implementation; joint follow-up and evaluation of EU interventions; joint messaging and joint communication and visibility strategies.
• Actions involving financial means include delegated cooperation, joint and parallel co-financing, and even contributions in kind. For example: multi-partner actions/agreements, blending with European financial institutions or financial guarantees, budget support, and twinning/TAIEX modalities.

Some instruments can combine both financial and non-financial modalities:

• Team Europe Initiatives combine both financial joint implementation (joint/pooled co-financing or parallel co-financing) with non-financial modalities (e.g. political and policy dialogue, joint visibility actions).
• Budget support aims to strengthen the capacity of partner countries in a sustainable way by using the country’s policy and public finance system⁷⁷. Capacity development needs are assessed for that purpose and supported, for example, through targeted capacity development measures or public technical assistance activities. Thus, budget support offers interesting opportunities for combining several joint implementation modalities (policy dialogue, capacity building, results monitoring and financial transfers).

Non-financial joint implementation (non-exhaustive list):

• joint sector gap analysis, where relevant, with clear links to humanitarian needs
• joint gender analysis
• joint conflict analysis
• joint dialogue and consultations
• joint engagement with academic and research networks
• joint monitoring and evaluation
• joint visibility
• mutual reliance on procedures

Financial joint implementation (non-exhaustive list):

• delegated cooperation & transfer agreements
• blending
• budgetary guarantees (EFSD+) joint financing
• budget support
• twinning/TAIEX and other forms of mobilising public sector expertise
• technical assistance using private-sector expertise
• South-South cooperation
• triangular cooperation
• parallel co-financing

⇒ A list of considerations when moving ahead with joint implementation is included in annex 2.

77 https://ec.europa.eu/international-partnerships/budget-support_en