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Working Better Together as Team Europe Through joint programming and joint implementation Guidance
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Section 3 JI: The contribution of joint implementation to impact and effectiveness

Working Better Together as Team Europe
Through joint programming and joint implementation

Guidance

A tool to help EU Delegations work better together with Member States as Team Europe and with like-minded partners and country stakeholders, through joint programming and implementation.

 

 

The contribution of joint implementation to impact and effectiveness

Joint implementation is grounded in a collective and strategic agreement between European partners. At the outset, all European partners should assess, for any of their country-based activities, whether joint implementation adds value and should be pursued

In 2019, the Practitioners’ Network and DG INTPA jointly commissioned a series of six case studies with the aim of identifying factors conductive to joint implementation, its added value and good practice by European partners in the field. This chapter distils those lessons and builds on the recommendations included in chapter 16.

In joint implementation, including financial modalities, it is also important that it combine financial, technical, organisational, operational and partnership resources to increase the ‘value’ of the Team Europe action. Value is created when partners work together to elaborate a theory of change and then design their combined intervention based on their respective competencies.

 

The network effect of joint implementation

Joint implementation facilitates access to wider and more extensive national and regional networks (as well as pools of external expertise). These networks are valuable as they can: (a) provide an evidence-base to inform policy positions; (b) add credibility to an external perspective; and (c) build a constituency that motivates partner countries to engage and take action. Joint implementation maximises these networking benefits and avoids the unintended consequence of any ‘division of labour’ whereby, through delegation (and exit or silent partnerships), access to networks might be reduced.

The network effect of joint implementation also applies to the political sphere, leveraging contacts between national parliaments, regional and local authorities, civil society, and the private sector. This builds policy dialogue entry points while also allowing for reality checks and adjustments to policy messaging, as well as providing contacts that can help with problems linked to project implementation.

 

Impact on development effectiveness

Joint implementation provides value added in terms of development effectiveness. Development effectiveness principles can be taken forward by using a joint implementation logic to move from project to programme support. This has associated benefits of coordinated planning, resourcing, management, capacity development and technical assistance, reporting and monitoring & evaluation. A programme-based approach may also help move the EU and MS forward on their commitments to strengthen and use national systems.

Joint implementation can enhance country ownership as the collaborative dynamic of information sharing encourages partner governments to engage. The peer relationship and mutual understanding between partners is reinforced, and the larger scope of expertise offered by Team Europe presents an attractive choice to partner countries between various European policy models and funding modalities. Moreover, information sharing brings greater transparency and contributes to capacity building.
This collaboration helps mobilise a wider range of national stakeholders drawing on the respective networks of each implementing partner, building stronger coalitions with important local actors and enhancing the probability of a longer-term, more sustainable impact.

Joint implementation with a coordinated group of partners can also reduce management costs for partner country governments and stakeholders. Overall, joint implementation has the potential to reduce aid fragmentation in targeted sectors and to foster greater coordination.

 

Impact on policy dialogue processes

Joint implementation activities have the potential to enhance political and policy dialogue with partner countries. Regardless of the entry point, joint implementation can strengthen partnership dynamics and dialogue. At project level, joint implementation improves access to senior officials; at sector level it facilitates input into the policy process; and at the strategic level it enhances political engagement. The results can be seen in greater mutual understanding, dialogue, insight, and action.

The ‘return impact’ of public technical assistance actions should also be noted, as mobilised experts can bring valuable experiences, knowledge and contacts to their home institutions once they are back from a mission or a project. European cooperation thus becomes a motor for SDG mainstreaming within the EU’s internal administrations and systems, which contributes to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda.

The sharing of information, an intrinsic part of joint implementation, facilitates relevant, consistent and coherent messaging of European values and vision. Joint implementation exemplifies the EU acting as one. As such, it can build more comprehensive and coordinated support packages for partner countries and design bigger projects in terms of scope and funding. This can lead to greater visibility for Team Europe, even beyond the project at hand, in the pertinent sector or in related areas.

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TOGO

In Togo, joint implementation directly led to a better understanding of the challenges at hand and demonstrated how the EU, MS and the partner country could foster a shared understanding of priorities that required a comprehensive donor-partner country-society dialogue. This resulted in empowering the government to take the lead in establishing an effective sector coordination structure.

 

Impact on resources and efficiencies

There is no evaluation that quantifies cost efficiencies in joint implementation to date. Nevertheless, it is evident from existing empirical analysis that the process of joint implementation fosters strategic coordination to help share and make the best use of our combined resources in support of partner country reform processes.

Nevertheless, the benefits must be carefully assessed and outweigh any associated costs. Project design may take longer under a joint implementation arrangement but could be considered an investment in quality. An extended network of trusted relationships can enhance project quality because it introduces intellectual challenge, diverse perspectives and a range of experience. This results in a more comprehensive knowledge of country context and needs, leading to a more relevant project design that greatly reduces implementation risks.

From a perspective of financial efficiency, joint implementation can reduce fragmentation and duplication risks by applying a programme approach to a group of projects or interventions. In addition to the development effectiveness potential of a programme approach, economies of scale can be found in pooling financial management and administrative overheads, as well as improving the coordination of inputs. However, it is critical to acknowledge that in order to deliver on our ambition for greater coherence and impact, a collective investment in human resources and support to country-level colleagues is required.

Joint implementation activities can also lead to cost reductions, particularly in the case of jointly financed multidonor actions and when burden sharing and mutual reliance help simplify governance structures or procedures. For example, multi-donor actions ensure joint action throughout the programme cycle, avoid duplication in sectors, focus the partner dialogue, ensure coherent messaging and reduce transaction costs at all levels. They also ensure the benefits derived from all other joint implementation methods, including cost reductions for scoping, design, procurement, monitoring, evaluation or audits, when one partner takes the lead; increased efficiency when steering committees, supervision or field missions, communication and visibility events are combined; reduced expenses when office space is shared, local human resources systems are aligned, or policy dialogues are conducted jointly.

Joint implementation can also be valuable for new cooperation partners entering a country, as it can help reduce set-up expenditures by sharing information between implementing partners at little to no extra cost.

Impact on visibility and communication

Joint implementation arrangements have the potential to increase the visibility of Team Europe as a whole as well as the visibility of each intervening Member State (see chapter 20). However, experience to date shows that this is still a contested area where the perspective of unity and an inclusive European visibility is not always evident: for example, discussions are often limited to formal visibility issues like logos and banners.

Joint implementation can increase the quality of visibility and communication on our development cooperation as implementing partners align to the highest standards, successfully applying peer-to-peer learning. Joint visibility events such as press visits, communication campaigns, press releases and signing ceremonies usually work best when they are organised jointly.

Joint messaging is a more popular — and arguably more visible and high-impact — activity. In both joint programme and non-joint programme countries, including Burkina Faso, Colombia, Congo, El Salvador, Guatemala, Palestine, the Philippines, Senegal, and Uruguay, joint messaging has been used to good effect at the political level on issues such as human rights. Joint messaging has been most successful when combined with a strategic approach to communications that matches the message with the media and the audience.

See annex 3 for a list of considerations when moving ahead with joint implementation.

 

Each section or chapter may be used separately to fulfil a specific need for guidance, which means there may be some overlap between the different parts of the document.

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