Team Europe - Standing Stronger Together
Europe was always about ‘Standing stronger together’. Team Europe (TE) brings together the EU, its Member States and their diplomatic network, finance institutions and implementing organizations, as well as the EIB and the EBRD. The Team Europe approach is a way of strengthening coordination, coherence and complementarities of actions to scale up European impact and raise Europe as partner of reference.
Team Europe members have been jointly designing Team Europe Initiatives in line with the Council Conclusions of 23rd of April 2021 to strategically promote the EU, its Member States and financial institutions as partners of reference, and to increase the impact and visibility of European action. The design of the TEIs is a balancing act of flexible cooperation arrangements between Team Europe members and the need to have a minimum common frame that keeps the TEI together. This common frame is envisaged as an overarching joint intervention logic for the TEI and its associated results. It should be noted that the Global Gateway will be developed and delivered mainly through Team Europe Initiatives.
An area where the Team Europe approach has been very visible and successful is vaccines. On 18 September 2020, the European Union confirmed to COVAX the participation of the European Union as part of a ‘Team Europe’ approach and has been at the forefront of global efforts to ensure international access to vaccines, with a Euro 3.2 billion contribution to the COVAX initiative. Updated information on the TEIs can be found on the Team Europe Initiatives and Joint Programming Tracker.
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Standing Stronger Together
European Financial Architecture for Development (EFAD)
The European Financial Architecture for Development (EFAD) plays a central role in Europe’s efforts to work towards the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and to tackle climate change. The structure builds on a multiplicity of EU and national actors, from both public and private sectors, as well as financial instruments. Together, as ‘Team Europe’, they all hold sizeable financial firepower and solid technical assistance capacity, as well as significant decision-making power in multilateral financial institutions.
Reflections on how to make the European Financial Architecture for Development more coherent, strategic, inclusive, impactful and visible started with the Wise Persons Group report published in 2019. The June 2021 Council conclusions confirmed the importance of enhancing and improving EFAD and invited the Commission to present a set of actions to ensure the current financial architecture for development is effectively improved.
Significant amount of work has taken place to support the European Development Finance Institutions to further strengthen their collaboration under a Team Europe approach and always aligned with the “policy first” level and with the aim to increase the visibility of EU external financing. The EIB-EBRD Joint Report details progress achieved and concrete steps taken in response to the June 2021 Council Conclusions. The implementation of ‘Global Gateway’ will be a catalyst to further leverage the entire European financial development ecosystem.