ZEF Public Lecture: The Rise of the Team Europe Approach in the European Union’s Development Policy and Operations

January 26, 2023 | 13:30 h - 14:30 h

We'd like to invite you to ZEF's Public Lecture!

Topic: The Rise of the Team Europe Approach in the European Union’s Development Policy and Operations

Speaker: Dr. Niels Keijzer, Senior Researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS)

The presentation is in-person only and will take place at the Center for Development Research / ZEF (conference room on the groundfloor), Genscherallee 3, 53113 Bonn.

Please register here: https://bit.ly/Registration-Jan26

Abstract:  In April 2020, the European Union set out its global response to the COVID-19 pandemic under the label of “Team Europe”. This lecture assesses the global context in which the EU’s proposal emerged and how it subsequently evolved from a short-term focused COVID-19 strategy towards a medium-term process-based agenda, which in turn became linked to the EU’s Global Gateway infrastructure investment initiative. It specifically assesses what Team Europe is, to what extent and how the Team Europe approach has changed the EU’s development cooperation, which effects it has on EU initiatives to support partner countries, and discusses the implications of Team Europe on the EU’s development policy in the medium and long term. It specifically looks into four key dimensions: (i) visibility, (ii) effectiveness, (iii) ownership and (iv) integration.

The lecture takes the following published IDOS discussion paper as a basis, but will include and discuss various new developments and policy trends that emerge since then: https://www.idos-research.de/uploads/media/DP_22.2021.pdf

Dr. Niels Keijzer is a Senior Researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS) in Bonn, Germany. He is based in the institute’s research programme on Inter- and Transnational Cooperation, where he coordinates a project on the European Union’s development and foreign policy, while representing IDOS in the European Think Tanks Group. He holds a PhD from Radboud University Nijmegen (the Netherlands) based on a doctoral dissertation on the European Union’s development policy. He also has a Master’s degree in Development Studies from the same university. His research and advisory work focuses on European development cooperation, EU-Africa relations, aid and development effectiveness, and policy coherence for development.