Foundation
The Team Europe Approach is a consistent, overall way of working. 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’s approach response to COVID-19 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 and 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 comprises three main methods, all of which can contribute to the identification of Global Gateway investments: 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.
The actors following a Team Europe approach are the European Union, the EU Member States (including their diplomatic network, finance institutions (including national development banks) and implementing agencies, as well as the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). With the rollout of the Global Gateway strategy, European private sector representatives (e.g., companies, investors) as well as the Member States’ export credit- and export promotion agencies are more and more integral to this grouping due to the role they play in catalyzing investments within the framework of our international partnerships. A partner of the Team Europe approach is defined as 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, local private sector, civil society, local authorities in partner countries, and multi-lateral partners such as the United Nations, the 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 stakeholders to achieve the 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals, including through the implementation of the Global Gateway strategy. 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. It enhances the EU’s contribution to results and impact by responding to our partner countries’ needs and priorities; strengthens European partnerships by aligning policy and political dialogue; promotes a joint EU response grounded in human-rights and gender equality; increases the EU’s visibility and influence; strengthens the humanitarian-development-peace nexus; and makes EU development cooperation, external action, and European investments more inclusive through a broader and more diverse EU offer. In the context of Global Gateway and the launch of Clean Trade and Investment Partnerships Team Europe also helps deepen the EU’s economic and trade relationships with partner countries. By aligning infrastructure investments with sustainable development goals and EU strategic objectives, Global Gateway supports job creation, economic diversification, and resilient value chains in key sectors such as renewable energy and critical raw materials. The engagement of export credit agencies and the EU private sector ensure that investment and trade is both sustainable and reciprocal—delivering tangible benefits for the European Union and its partners.
⇒ 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.