Foundation
The Team Europe Approach is a consistent overall approach. It has evolved from the idea of joint programming in 2008 and the subsequent EU commitment to the development effectiveness principles in 2011 to the Team Europe approach COVID-response and the Global Gateway strategy. Continuously evolving, the overall aim and guiding principle for the EU and EU Member States is to work with partner countries and other partners to improve development effectiveness and have greater impact for people living in poverty.
The Team Europe approach is essentially about ‘coming together’ to jointly reflect, analyse, and plan and ‘doing together’ through joint and coordinated policy dialogue, parallel and joint actions, projects, communication. Ideally actors following a Team Europe approach both ‘come’ and ‘do’ together, but it is possible to just focus on one or the other separately. The Team Europe approach encompasses three main methods: Joint programming, joint implementation and Team Europe Initiatives. Joint programming can generally work as the strategic umbrella for joint implementation and Team Europe Initiatives, but the 3 methods can also be followed separately or in other combinations[1]. The three different methods are implemented using tools that might be shared between the methods or specific to each method. Examples of such tools include joint analysis, parallel financing, joint intervention logics, joint results monitoring, policy dialogue etc.
Actors following a Team Europe approach are the European Union, the EU Member States, including their development agencies, public development banks, EU development finance institution and export credit agencies, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). A partner of the Team Europe approach is any organisation that is not a Team Europe actor but is an external partner to actors following a Team Europe approach in their work, such as partners working with us to deliver the results in a Team Europe approach such as development partners, private sector, civil society, local authorities in partner countries, United Nations, International Labour Organization or the World Bank.
Partnership and collaboration are at the heart of the Team Europe approach, in line with development effectiveness principles and a human rights-based, gender-responsive and conflict sensitive approach. Inclusive and meaningful consultations in all phases are central to the Team Europe approach to foster an inclusive, effective, legitimate, accountable engagement with partner countries, other development partners and other partners and stakeholders to achieve the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals. The Team Europe approach is built on i) enhanced consultation, ii) policy dialogue, iii) identifying priorities in line with partner country priorities, iv) strengthening partnership dynamics and v) requesting and providing input and feedback.
There is great value in the Team Europe approach as it can: enhance the EU’s contribution to results and impact in response to our partner countries’ needs and priorities; boost European partnerships by reinforcing the links between policy and political dialogue; advance a joint EU human-rights based and gender responsive geopolitical response; increase EU visibility and influence; strengthen the links between activities in the humanitarian, development, and peace sectors; and make the EU development cooperation and external action more inclusive through a broader and more diverse EU offer.
⇒ For further reading please see section 1 and annex 4 of the full guidance.
1 See visual overview of the TEA and its three main methods at the end of this abridged version of the guidance.