Working Better Together in a Team Europe Approach

Team Europe Initiatives (TEIs) is a method that straddles both ‘coming together’ and ‘doing together’. TEIs focus on specific areas of shared interest, where a coordinated and coherent effort through a Team Europe approach and anchored in European principles and values ensures results with a transformative impact. TEIs aspire to use the most effective combination of resources, instruments, and expertise to achieve impact. More specifically:

• TEIs can be defined as working better together through three elements: 1) scale, combining resources, expertise, and tools; 2) focus, becoming the partner of reference on selected priorities; and 3) ensuring visibility on the concrete impact of the Team Europe approach.
• TEIs combine existing and planned EU, Member States’ and European financing institutions’ resources, instruments, and expertise so that they jointly work on common objectives, which are of shared interest for both actors following a Team Europe approach and partner country governments. TEIs are comprised of coordinated but independently implemented components.
• TEIs are made up of different components that are each separately funded by one or more TEI participants. TEIs are about placing these different components in a coherent whole, which then becomes more than the sum of its parts because the TEI enhances development effectiveness and include, for example, joint policy dialogue and visibility dimensions.
• TEIs are grounded at the most appropriate level for action ie. country, regional or global. For regional and global TEIs it is important to ensure that they respond to challenges that are regional/global in nature and cannot be (solely) addressed at country level. Regional and global TEIs should not duplicate country level TEIs but complement and work in synergy with them.
• A TEI participant is any actor following a Team Europe approach, hence the EU, its Member States, including their development agencies, public development banks, development finance institution and export credit agencies, as well as the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), that contribute financially to a TEI. Inclusiveness is a core principle and all TEI participants are part of the management and political steer of the TEI, whatever the size/type of their contribution
• Participation in a TEI could be through any implementation modality (grant, loan, guarantee, blended finance, technical assistance, hosting of an event etc.), including in-kind contributions if a financial value can be associated with them. For a country TEI there should be at least 3 TEI participants: for a regional TEI, at least 4.
• Coordination of TEIs and their management set-up should be as simple as possible and retain flexibility, building on the coordination role of EU Delegations. Ambassadors steer the process, while Cooperation and/or Political/ Economic counsellors manage the implementation.
• The core elements of Team Europe Initiatives are the design and formulation of TEIs, which consists of a concept note, a Joint Intervention Logic (JIL) and a mapping of indicative financial contributions. The Monitoring, reporting and evaluation of TEIs is critical to showcase their impact, contribute to accountability and providing visibility to the work of the EU and Member States. Monitoring is conceived in a way to make use of EU and Member States usual standards and practices and a financial tracking methodology for TEIs has been agreed.
• Partner country authorities, other development partners, and other stakeholders and partners should be consulted throughout the TEI project cycle, considering that country ownership, partnerships and collaboration are at the heart of the Team Europe approach.

⇒ For further reading please see section 4 and annex 3 of the full guidance.