COVID-19 as a critical juncture for EU development policy? Assessing the introduction and evolution of “Team Europe”

ABSTRACT

This contribution analyses to what extent the EU’s external response to the COVID-19 pandemic, communicated under the label ‘Team Europe’, represents a critical juncture for the EU’s development policy in terms of creating conditions for institutional change. As an area of shared competence, EU development policy processes predominantly seek to strengthen cooperation between the EU and its member states whilst respecting their respective competencies. Such initiatives have lacked success due to member states’ resistance towards strengthened coordination, let alone integration. By contrast, the Team Europe approach promoted the pooling of choices and resources of EU institutions and member states and strengthened the frequency and political importance of enhanced cooperation. The article identifies the European Commission’s policy entrepreneurship, the alignment with member states’ interests, low levels of politicisation and broader contextual geopolitical changes as key explanatory factors influencing more favourable attitudes aimed at and prospects for closer cooperation as promoted by Team Europe.

KEYWORDS:

• EU
• development policy
• COVID-19
• coordination
• critical juncture
• historical institutionalism

1. Introduction

The European integration process was born out of crisis and has broadened and deepened through successive crises. In recent years, these crises have intensified in frequency, affecting both the EU’s reaction time and its political attention span. The EU’s piecemeal responses are considered by some as a ‘crisisification’ of European policy-making in terms of a disruption of traditional decision-making processes and actor constellations in the EU (Rhinard 2019). Recent literature has theorised the differences between crises regarding the degree of EU competence involved and the degree of symmetry of pressures generated by a crisis (Ferrara and Kriesi 2022), analysed differences in national preference formation and intergovernmental bargaining during crises (Schimmelfennig 2018) or described a Union ‘failing forwards’ as intergovernmental bargains create a basis for subsequent crises, which in turn result in deeper EU integration (Jones, Kelemen, and Meunier 2021). While today different crises demand the EU’s attention, the genuinely unprecedented nature of the global pandemic is widely considered a key moment in European integration with varying yet fundamental changes in various policy fields (see Wolff and Ladi 2020).

During the first weeks of the global COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, the EU initially showed an uncoordinated approach. Its response was characterised by a lack of solidarity among, and at times direct competition between EU member states, as well as the disruption of the internal market and freedom of movement through the haphazard reintroduction of temporary internal border controls. Research on the EU’s internal and external response to the pandemic describes how the EU and member states overcame this first reaction and subsequently engaged in various types of coordinated action. These analyses observe that the EU’s response demonstrated a degree of adaptability to a permanent emergency mode that it did not show in previous crisis situations, and that the pandemic created momentum for collective action and fast decision-making albeit with considerable variation across policy fields (Quaglia and Verdun 2023; Wolff and Ladi 2020). While existing research on EU’s response to the pandemic has focused on a range of EU policy areas, including economic governance (Ladi and Tsarouhas 2020), climate policy (Dupont, Oberthür, and von Homeyer 2020), health policy (Brooks and Geyer 2020), competition policy (Meunier and Mickus 2020) or mobility and Schengen (Wolff, Servent, and Piquet 2020), research on the impact of the pandemic on the EU’s development policy and the dynamics between the EU and its member states has been comparatively limited to date (e.g. Burni et al. 2022).

Development policy constitutes an important dimension of EU’s external response to the pandemic given the dominant use of development finance for supporting its partner countries in addressing their immediate economic, social and health costs and needs. As an area of shared competence, the EU’s development policy is based on the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) (Article 4 and Article 208) and the Treaty on European Union (TEU) (Article 21(2)(d)). It is governed by a set of interconnected institutions, policy statements, budget frameworks and other rules and procedures set by the EU and/or its member states. The EU’s development polity is thus an amalgam of different parts, diverging interests, preferences and norms. The question of how to define and implement policies together and to increase coordination between all actors in order to develop joint, coherent and effective policies with lasting impacts is therefore an intrinsic significant political and organisational challenge for the EU (see Orbie and Versluys 2008; Orbie and Lightfoot 2017; Lundsgaarde and Keijzer 2019). In recent years, the EU and its member states have struggled to provide a coordinated and long-term oriented development policy response to regional and global crises (Furness et al. 2020).

The EU’s development policy response to the pandemic broke with this pattern. On 8 April 2020, a Joint Communication by the European Commission and the European External Action Service (EEAS) announced the birth of ‘Team Europe’. As its name-givers stated, Team Europe aimed to support EU partner countries in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic by pulling together financial resources provided by the EU institutions, member states, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) (Burni et al. 2022). In subsequent months, this initial overall purpose was broadened to supporting the longer-term reconstruction in partner countries, while ‘Team Europe’ was increasingly used in a more horizontal fashion to refer to the EU and its member states’ efforts to work together in development policy. With the planning of future cooperation spending under the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI)/Global Europe instrument (2021–2027), the Team Europe approach has become the default option for promoting cooperation between member states and the European Commission (Keijzer et al. 2021).

This article explores the empirical puzzle as to why the EU’s development policy response to the pandemic showed greater willingness for and performance in more joined-up action through Team Europe compared to its response to previous crises when the EU mainly adapted its strategies but failed to improve closer coordination. The article juxtaposes the Union’s COVID-19 response to its policy response to the financial and migration crises. The purpose of this analysis is to better understand how change, in the form of Team Europe, became possible and illustrate to what extent this altered approach may enable lasting institutional change and further European integration in the field of development policy. To this end, the article applies the concept of ‘critical juncture’ as developed in the context of historical institutionalist analysis (Capoccia 2016; Capoccia and Kelemen 2007). This concept allows us to investigate the quality of the changes made and the degree to which the EU has overcome its path dependency and set up new forms of institutional collaboration that were not possible before the outbreak of the pandemic.

The article draws on a literature and document analysis as well as semi-structured expert interviews with a total of 12 respondents conducted in the first half of 2021 (see Annex 1). The respondents were generally mid-ranking officials working for the EEAS, Commission and member states, in the latter case either in Brussels or from their capitals (i.e. policy officers, desk officers and councillors, as applicable). The interviews were jointly conducted online by two authors, who took and afterwards collated written notes that were subsequently hand-coded to determine converging as well as diverging patterns. As interviewees were consulted for their views and perceptions on an ongoing process and included unofficial and personal impressions in this context, the interviews were conducted on the condition of anonymity. While not reflecting the full diversity of EU member states, the diversity of respondents jointly provides a plausible ‘snapshot’ of the general internal perception of the EU’s Team Europe efforts.

Our findings suggest that contrary to previous crisis situations, neither the EU nor its member states changed their overarching development policies in direct response to the pandemic. Yet, the Team Europe approach and the pooling of strategic choices and resources of EU institutions and member states helped to strengthen cooperation and promoted more effective ways of working together. The mix of high-level support for Team Europe and the generally bottom-up identification of joint flagship initiatives contributed to manifesting and consolidating the idea of Team Europe. The pandemic has therefore triggered a critical juncture for how the EU and member states coordinate their actions while leaving little mark on the strategic orientation of their development policies. We identify four explanatory factors that have shaped this outcome: (1) policy entrepreneurship of the Commission, (2) promotion of member states’ interests, (3) low levels of politicisation, and (4) changes in the geopolitical landscape. While policy entrepreneurship and member states’ interests are common factors found to affect policy outcomes in various EU policy areas, our analysis observes that particularly low levels of politicisation and the changed geopolitical context were distinctive in the case of the pandemic and contributed to the emergence of Team Europe.

The remainder of the article is structured as follows: first, we introduce historical institutionalist research and discuss the concept of critical juncture. We also introduce the four explanatory factors which we expect to be significant for EU decision-making processes and potential critical junctures. Second, we analyse the changes brought about by the pandemic for EU development policy with a key focus on Team Europe and contrast it with the EU’s response to previous crisis situations. The third section further examines the four explanatory factors and describes how they influenced that outcome. We conclude with a summary of our findings and a discussion of their implications for future research.

2. Explaining institutional change: historical institutionalism and critical junctures

2.1. Critical junctures

Historical institutionalism, one of the so-called new institutionalisms, is a pertinent approach to studying change in the EU. Historical institutionalist analysis principally assumes that the processes and structures of decision-making, as well as the timing and order of decisions made, allow research to understand policy evolutions (Steinmo 2008). Assuming that institutions operate in a context of path-dependency and favour policy continuity, historical institutionalism focuses on the macro processes of path dependency and ‘lock-in’ situations (March and Olsen 1984). Critical historical institutionalist literature adds that path dependence may not only entail positive effects but can also operate defensively if actors think that the path needs to be adhered to more rigorously than before (Plank and Bergmann 2021). It is generally assumed that once formulated or built, policies and institutions continue on their path until an event or crisis is big enough to interrupt and question them – a process which initiates various forms and degrees of policy or institutional change (Hogan 2019). However, while convincingly describing how institutions are maintained and renewed over time, historical institutionalist analysis has struggled to explain those moments when fundamental institutional change does occur (Steinmo 2008).

One concept explaining such instances concerns the ‘critical juncture’, which are moments of unsettled and turbulent times that generate windows of opportunity for policy or institutional change (Capoccia 2016). The article applies the concept of critical juncture in order to guide and structure its analysis and makes cursory reference to associated insights from historical institutionalist literature.

A critical juncture has been defined as ‘a brief interval characterised by “a substantially heightened probability that agents” choices will affect the outcome of interest’ (Capoccia and Kelemen 2007, 348). Critical junctures both expose and express the limitations of existing approaches or policies. Unanticipated events or large-scale crisis situations tend to reveal the weaknesses of existing systems and institutions and their inability to react to an emerging situation. After those intervals where change may or may not occur, institutions ‘lock’ back in into path dependency as they realize increasing returns of the status quo and opportunity costs for further change (Howlett 2009; Mahoney 2001). While such critical junctures provide opportunities for fundamental change, they may also lead to continuity by maintaining the existing course or stretch the existing policy paradigm (Hogan 2019).

Time is a key element in the critical juncture concept. Capoccia (2016) highlights the need to be able to identify the causal relationship between an event and its impact on future events, which means that a critical juncture can only really be identified after a certain period of time when this effect becomes visible and measurable. Dupont, Oberthür and Homeyer, however, point out that it is possible to ‘identify the potential of a certain event to change the direction of policy or institutional development toward new pathways or path dependencies for the future, thereby outlining how likely it is that an event becomes a critical juncture’ (Dupont, Oberthür and Homeyer 2020, p. 1097). In order to make such an ex-ante assessment of the likelihood of the critical juncture to promote institutional change, one should not only analyse the event itself but also the timing when it occurred and the extent to which key actors considered the current institutions’ ability to cope with it adequately and effectively.

2.2. Outcomes of critical junctures and their explanatory factors

The fact that a critical juncture may lead to different outcomes has been associated with several explanatory factors in the European studies literature. In this sub-section, we introduce the explanatory factors that are identified in this literature to play a role in influencing institutional change in EU Development policy processes. We subsequently operationalise our theoretical framework and specify concrete expectations regarding the potential interaction between our identified explanatory variables that may lead to a critical juncture. The potential of a critical juncture describes a situation where change from existing path dependencies becomes possible. Wolff and Ladi (2020) defined three potential outcomes that could have occurred in European policy making in response to the COVID-19 pandemic: (1) new policy initiatives and change of status quo (positive effect) 2) backtracking of existing policies (negative effect), (3) policy continuity (no effect).

We have identified four intervening variables which play a role for this positive effect of the pandemic on increased coordination within EU development policy through Team Europe: (i) the role of the European Commission as a policy entrepreneur, (ii) the promotion of member states’ interests, (iii) low levels of politicisation, (iv) changes in the geopolitical context. Figure 1 presents the assumed interaction between these four factors and positions the first outcome vis-à-vis the two alternatives that could have emerged instead. The four factors are subsequently introduced and further discussed below.

Figure 1. Factors influencing institutional change in the EU development policy process.

Source: own elaboration.

The first factor that commonly plays a role in EU decision-making and change processes relates to change agents, also referred to as policy entrepreneurs (Dupont, Oberthür, and von Homeyer 2020; Hogan 2019; Kingdon 2011). If a policy or institutional setting is considered inappropriate to deal with the emerging situation of crisis, individuals or institutions can act as policy entrepreneurs who realise the need for change and the ‘policy window’ and push for a change of the status quo (Hermansen 2015; Mintrom 1997). According to Wolff and Ladi (2020) policy entrepreneurs define or reframe problems and articulate ideas directly, by building coalitions with key stakeholders, and indirectly through influencing public debates. A common characteristic of policy entrepreneurs concerns their volition to change ‘the status quo in given areas of public policy’ (Mintrom 2015, 103, emphasis in the original). To achieve this, policy entrepreneurs first require the ability to assess why a problem requires action (at the EU level) and second, the capability to build and maintain alliances to gain support for a given policy initiative. This understanding matches Kingdon’s (2011) definition that the role of policy entrepreneurs ranges from problem identification and interpretation to the negotiation of a specific policy response.

Although EU officials are occasionally observed to display entrepreneurial behaviour, a larger body of studies focuses on the EU institutions’ role as institutional policy entrepreneur (e.g. Boasson and Wettestad 2013; Dupont, Oberthür, and von Homeyer 2020; Laffan 1997; Skjærseth and Wettestad 2010). In the context of this article, we focus on the role of the Commission as an institutional entrepreneur, since the European Commission has the primary right of initiative for proposing legislative and non-legislative European actions. Following Carbone’s (2021) argument that policy entrepreneurship is an under-studied concept in the literature on EU development policy, we assume that a positive effect of the COVD-19 pandemic on the increase in successful coordination activities between the EU institutions and member states depends on the European Commission assuming a strong policy entrepreneurship role. The Commission worked with the EEAS in formulating the Joint Communication, as both share the responsibility to determine external action spending under the EU budget (see Burni et al., 2022). While both worked together in the further conceptualisation of Team Europe, the Commission was considered by our interviewees to have played the leading role in taking the idea of Team Europe forward (Interviews 2, 4, 5). Compared to the EEAS, the Commission was also considered to have more human and financial resources available in this regard. For these reasons, we focus on the Commission’s role as a policy entrepreneur.

The second explanatory factor concerns the interests of EU member states as a decisive factor in EU policy making. Overall, it is fair to say that member states have a strong interest in shaping European development policy in their favour by ‘uploading’ their preferences to the EU level while simultaneously shielding their domestic budgetary sovereignty and control over domestic policies from EU’s interference. As such, the literature on EU development policy generally assumes that the resistance towards stronger coordination, Europeanisation and integration is based on a strong desire to maintain control over domestic policies (Koch and Molenaers 2016; Orbie and Carbone 2016). Looking more specifically at the interests at stake with regard to closer coordination in development policy, it can be noted that there is a broad consensus among European donors that more and closer coordination is desirable – in theory (Klingebiel, Negre, and Morazán 2017). While some studies estimated the financial and non-financial costs of non-coordination (for example, Bigsten 2013; Dearden 2013) and assessed and quantified the potential savings that can be achieved through closer coordination (Bigsten and Tengstam 2015; Klingebiel, Morazán, and Negre 2013) arguing for the (business) case for greater coordination, there are a number of well-documented competing and contradicting political economy factors that work against this. This relates to development policy being a competitive field with especially bigger member states aiming to preserve their national interests and the interests of their implementing agencies, to different reporting requirements from national parliaments, budget cycles and audit institutions to visibility concerns of EU member states who want to showcase their bilateral contributions in developing countries and at home (Klingebiel, Negre, and Morazán 2017). We thus expect closer coordination at the EU level in the wake of the pandemic to only occur if member states perceive their benefits of closer coordination to outweigh their potential costs.

A third key factor that plays a role for initiatives in EU development policy is the level of politicisation. Hackenesch et al. (2021) defined politicisation as a three-dimensional process that includes increasing the salience of debates, a polarisation of opinions, and an expansion of actors and audiences involved in European debates and decision-making. Politicisation can create change in two ways: bottom-up, which occurs when civil society’s rising concerns lead to higher mobilisation to advocate for change, or top-down, which refers to a situation where policy becomes an issue for high-level politics and decisions at the highest political level (Dupont, Oberthür, and von Homeyer 2020; Schmidt 2019). Particularly during the aftermath of the migration crisis, EU development policy moved from a low-salience, technocratic policy field primarily of interest to development and foreign policy communities to an area of increasing debates and conflict, with a growing number of actors taking an interest in development actions and funds which significantly hampered intra-European coordination (Bergmann et al. 2019). We anticipate positive changes regarding coordination in development cooperation between the EU and its member states to only occur in situations characterised by low levels of politicisation and low levels of contradicting preferences among member states.

Fourth and last, we expect the geopolitical context to play a decisive role in moving from status-quo to institutional change, as dramatic shifts in this landscape can take the form of exogenous shocks that require EU’s re-positioning as a global actor. The gradual decline of Western dominance and simultaneous rise of emerging powers, including the rise of China and other non-OECD members of the G20, the (temporary) retreat of the United States from multilateralism, the rise of authoritarianism and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrate deep-cutting geopolitical shifts. Concerned over its geopolitical place and influence, the European Commission is increasingly seeking to transform itself from a benevolent bystander into a shaping force of global politics – a ‘geopolitical Commission’, which also incarnates and defends democratic and liberal values (Zwolski 2020). Although the EU’s market and regulatory power remain the central tools to realise such ambitions, increased pressure on development policy to contribute to EU’s security and economic interests (Furness et al. 2020) and the pressure on development policy’s visibility in supporting partner countries demonstrates the development policy’s significance in this strategy. In the aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak, the EU saw itself in a battle with China over disinformation and the sovereignty of interpretation of the crisis (Wolff and Ladi 2020). As this battle also played out in partner countries over the form of support and most importantly the provision and distribution of vaccines and medical equipment, the EU saw itself pressured to let its development policy plays a bigger and more visible role in its response to the pandemic (Burni et al. 2022). Consequently, we expect that geopolitical competition and the assumption that existing forms of cooperation are insufficient to maintain and strengthen the EU’s position on the world stage are important contextual factors for closer coordination.

We consider that the interaction between these four factors is a precondition for a positive outcome and closer coordination. While it is essential that the EU shows entrepreneurial skills in proposing a course of action as the starting point for further deliberations, this policy entrepreneurship is not sufficient unless it is well aligned with member states’ preferences and interests. Due to the limited degree of European integration in the field of development policy, the European Commission needs to specifically and ex-ante assure itself of member states’ preferences and support before tabling proposals in the Foreign Affairs Council (Development). In other words, the quality of the idea(s) promoted by the Commission and its further engagement in lobbying the member states can only be successful if it considers the preferences of the member states.

In addition to this general interaction between the Commission and the member states in policy- making, important contextual factors need to be considered too. The type and degree of politicisation during the set-up phase of a policy initiative can promote or hamper a policy entrepreneur’s ambition for change and influence member states’ interests. The changes in the geopolitical landscape are a further contextual factor which not only influences the content of a given initiative but also creates external pressure on the EU to show entrepreneurial skills and increases member states’ willingness to engage jointly. Therefore, we propose that a combination of a dedicated policy entrepreneur whose policy proposal is well aligned with member states’ interest is a necessary but not sufficient condition for change in EU development policy coordination unless contextualized by low levels of politicisation and geopolitical changes that create a sense of urgency for the EU to act together.

3. COVID-19 as a critical juncture for EU development policy?

3.1. The EU’s response to past crises: 2008–2015

During the past and present decade, the changes in the EU’s development policy are both, a response to a ‘crisisification’ affecting the European project altogether and a conscious decision to pursue a development policy that is more flexible and aligned with the EU’s strategic interests as confirmed in the 2016 EU Global Strategy on Foreign and Security Policy (Bergmann et al. 2019; Furness et al. 2020). Particularly, the global financial and economic crisis from 2007 to 2009 and the so-called migration crisis in 2015 have prompted a dedicated EU development policy response.¹

The global financial and economic crisis and the European debt crisis it triggered created an international environment that was characterised by austerity and increased global economic competition. The crisis put a heavy burden on European economies, leading to shrinking aid budgets and debates over the best ways to spend the limited resources. In addition to discussions about the volume of the EU’s aid budget, the financial crisis impacted the objectives of EU development aid, resulting in a stronger emphasis on the EU’s commercial, foreign policy and security interests (Furness et al. 2020; Koch 2015). As the financial crisis unfolded at the start of the EU’s 2007–2013 Multi-Annual Financial Framework, the EU swiftly adapted its budgetary means to support developing countries’ resilience in the global financial crisis. Following a proposal by the Commission, and in cooperation with international financial institutions, the EU provided grant-based finance to developing countries under the Vulnerability-FLEX (V-FLEX) mechanism as adopted in 2010. This initiative came on top of earlier efforts specifically designed to support countries facing high food prices. Although member states supported the Commission’s proposal, they did not become involved through their bilateral programmes. The EU’s subsequent Agenda for Change (2012) reflected a new strategy for the Commission without significant impact on member states’ own strategies or attempts at closer coordination (Bergmann et al. 2019; Koch 2018).

The second key crisis that the EU responded to through its development policy was the so-called migration crisis in 2015. While the economic context created by the global financial crisis and the Eurozone crisis introduced stronger ties between development, economic and foreign policy objectives, the European migration crisis had more profound implications for the design, financing and implementation of the EU’s development policy. Following the arrival of large numbers of Syrian refugees in Europe in autumn 2015, member states pressured the EU to use its development assistance to halt the influx of refugees and migrants and to make its aid disbursements conditional on a country’s cooperation on migration and security matters. As a result, the EU development policy’s objective shifted to address the ‘root causes’ of migration and displacement (Knoll and Sherriff 2017; Rozbicka and Szent-Iványi 2020) through the creation of the Emergency Trust Fund for Africa. The funds for the Trust Fund were predominantly sourced from reserves of the European Development Fund and varying degrees of EU member states’ financial contributions. Besides this co-funding involvement and the implementing responsibilities assumed by member states, no connection with member states’ bilateral programmes was made. In general, the migration crisis led to heated debates among and within member states and high-levels of politicisation, which made cooperation and coordination increasingly challenging (see Szent-Iványi and Kugiel 2020; Trauner 2016; Zaun and Nantermoz 2022).

Two observations link this overview to the historical institutionalist concepts introduced in the previous section. First, the timing of the crises in relation to the EU budget cycle played a crucial role for the EU’s response to both the financial and the migration crisis. Both unfolded at an early stage in the EU’s multi-annual financial framework (resp. covering 2007–2013 and 2014–2020) which allowed the EU to ‘frontload’ some of the resources. Moreover, a key feature of the EU’s development policy concerned the European Development Fund (EDF), which had proven to be a resilient feature as an intergovernmental fund that had become more closely aligned yet remained independent from the EU’s budget. The reserves of unspent successive EDFs could be used flexibly for both crises, including notably for the creation of the EU Trust Fund for Africa in 2015. It took until 2021 for the EU Council to reach a consensus to incorporate the EDF into the new NDICI/Global Europe Instrument (Burni et al. 2022; Keijzer 2020). A second observation is that in the reaction to these two crises the emphasis was placed on the response through the EU’s budget and an adaptation of EU’s development policy strategies but not on closer coordination with EU member states’ bilateral development cooperation.

Against this background, the following two sub-sections proceed with describing and analysing the EU’s development policy response to the pandemic.

3.2. Impact of the pandemic on improved coordination under “Team Europe”?

On 8 April 2020, the European Commission announced the birth of ‘Team Europe’ to support EU partner countries in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequences. To this end, it pulled together financial resources from all EU institutions, member states, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) (see Burni et al. 2022). With the majority of the mobilised funding (more than €12 billion out of €15.6 billion) dedicated to helping countries to mitigate economic and social consequences caused by the pandemic, the EU demonstrated an early awareness of the pandemic’s long-term implications. The initiative was introduced and facilitated by the European Commission and the EEAS, initially focusing on the visibility and financial dimension of the EU’s direct external response to the pandemic (Burni et al. 2022). Although the Commission and EEAS took the lead, they did so in the knowledge that the member states supported this approach – as did the European Parliament, which welcomed the initiative but played no direct role in shaping the EU’s response (Keijzer et al. 2021, 8).

While the original idea pushed forward by the European Commission aimed at delivering a fast-tracked response to the pandemic by repurposing planned projects, as the months progressed, the understanding of Team Europe broadened from its primary visibility and financial emphasis to the focus on the process of preparing longer-term cooperation strategies that covered the entire scope of EU’s development policy. In essence, Team Europe evolved from a thematic agenda (‘what?’) to a key means to pursuing programmatic cooperation with the member states (‘how?’) (Keijzer et al. 2021). The Commission Director General for International Partnership linked the success of Team Europe to that of a soccer team which uses “everyone’s specific talents for the collective benefit“.² Following this rationale, the Commission proposed so-called Team Europe Initiatives (TEIs), joint flagship activities that combine the contributions by the EU, selected member states and banks in relation to specific themes in a specific country or region or those initiatives to be pursued at the global level. The Commission and EEAS tasked their Delegations in the EU’s partner countries to lead the process of preparing proposals for TEIs in summer 2020. Together with other member states present in the countries concerned and, when applicable, the EIB and EBRD, EU Delegations prepared proposals for TEIs that brought together a mix of modalities, tools and partners, including Civil Society Organisations and the private sector.

Overall, and according to a number of interviewees, Team Europe has contributed to a positive attitude towards joint action (Interviews 2, 5, 6). The officials consulted broadly considered the Commission as the main driver behind Team Europe. The Commission carefully investigated and dedicated ample time and resources to establish Team Europe and securing member states’ support while opting for a flexible and bottom-up process to ensure broad involvement of the member states. The move towards online and virtual communication facilitated meetings between member states and EU institutions, as they no longer required time-related investments for travel. The move towards virtual meetings also allowed for more inclusive exchanges as member states could involve multiple representatives and/or associated organisations (Interview 8). Although the Team Europe process sought to strengthen inclusiveness of all member states and managed to ensure broad-based support, the bottom-up preparation presented an advantage to member states with considerable diplomatic representations and ongoing or planned cooperation programmes in EU’s partner countries. This led to a group of smaller member states, amongst them Portugal, Belgium and Ireland, making the case for greater inclusivity in EU development cooperation during the Portuguese Presidency in the first half of 2021 (Keijzer et al. 2021; Interview 4).

Team Europe generated a level of traction that had never been achieved by earlier more technical and process-oriented efforts to promote coordinated action between the EU and the member states such as Joint Programming and Working Better Together. These earlier initiatives were perceived as bureaucratic and vague, and the proposed coordination was not perceived as being able to reduce fragmentation and lowering transaction costs (Lundsgaarde & Keijzer 2016). By comparison, the direct link to the COVID-19 pandemic response, the realisation by member states that this crisis could not be tackled individually, the geopolitical dimension in terms of the competition with other international partners and the associated need to strengthen the EU’s collective ‘visibility’, justified that Team Europe discussions could be conducted with both member states’ administrative and political leadership (Keijzer et al. 2021; Interview 7). The discussion of TEIs at the level of Directors General has, first of all, meant a considerable increase in discussions on EU cooperation in the field of development policy, and perhaps implied some degree of ‘integration by stealth’ (Keijzer et al. 2021, p. 30).

Finally, a key element in the Commission’s approach was flexibility of process. The Commission put considerable emphasis on process and did not define key concepts and outcomes but expected these to emerge through the interactions with the member states. Although this ‘building the path while walking’ approach was not without its challenges, especially for member state officials who could not answer ‘what’s next?’ questions by their respective administration, this iterative approach was important to build up momentum and keep all member states on board. Keijzer et al. (2021) suggest that the risk of member state opposition would have been greater if the Commission had proposed a defined process and outcome right from the start. The website of the EEAS confirms this conscious design feature of the TEIs as follows: ‘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’.³ As member states were contributing funds to Team Europe and were free to choose the TEIs they wanted to engage with, they were actively involved in shaping TEI’s content but without having to work out a comprehensive joint strategy other than its broad elements.

A few months into the pandemic, Council Conclusions were adopted in June 2020 by EU ministers responsible for development policy in which they expressed their ‘full support’ for the Team Europe approach. Furthermore, the ministers called for consistency between the short-term measures that were prepared in the first weeks of the pandemic and the programming of medium and long-term support under the EU’s next seven-year budget framework (Burni et al. 2022; Keijzer et al. 2021). Calling for applying the same approach and level of priority for working together in the current crisis response context to the longer-term approach for working together between the EU and its member states, they sought to capitalise on the critical juncture and change the ways in which all involved actors work together. The long-term ambition of Team Europe, and the political priority attached to this initiative, was confirmed and clarified in February 2021 in a letter signed by the European Commissioner for International Partnerships, the High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy and 25 EU ministers in charge of development policy that was addressed to EU Delegations, member state embassies and the offices of respective EU development finance institutions and agencies (Keijzer et al. 2021). Subsequent Council Conclusions as prepared under the German EU Council Presidency and adopted in April 2021 reaffirmed the agreements made and suggested that Team Europe cooperation could be expanded to relevant multilateral and international fora. The Council Conclusions further standardised the TEIs as a mode of joint cooperation by identifying common principles (Council of the EU 2021, 5). The significance of the Team Europe approach was confirmed in the interviews with our interlocutors who certified that the current debates on EU development policy are dominated by Team Europe and TEI-related processes (Interview 2, 3, 5, 6, 7).

3.3. Impact of the pandemic on the substance of EU development policy

Whereas the pandemic changed member states’ attitude towards working together, our interviewees suggested that it has not led to a fundamental readjustment of member states’ or the EU’s development cooperation policies (Interview 1, 2, 4, 5).

The biggest strategy-related change generated by the pandemic occurred in the area of global health. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the EU was not a strong supporter of global health issues or the World Health Organisation (WHO), with some highlighting that the ambition expressed by the EU in its 2010 Global Health Council Conclusions was never realised (Bergner, van de Pas, van Schaik and Voss 2020). As a response to the pandemic, the EU significantly stepped-up its support for global health measures through Team Europe and multilateral fora such as the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access Initiative (COVAX) and the WHO. Member states too became active supporters of global health, providing a large amount of additional funds for strengthening health systems in partner countries and supporting the COVAX initiative with Germany, the EU and Sweden ranking among the top five contributors.

While having to respond to immediate health and economic needs and re-shifting funds for this purpose, most interviewees said that the overall direction of their development policies has been reinforced and confirmed by the pandemic. Interestingly, this assessment was shared regardless of the individual member state’s focus prior to the pandemic. Those member states whose bilateral policies prior to the pandemic prioritised traditional objectives of development cooperation, such as poverty reduction and human development point to the pandemic’s devastating effects on these areas and continue to emphasise these objectives (Interview 4, 5). Other member states that focus more strongly on climate change, green transitions and biodiversity equally saw their priorities confirmed by the pandemic and highlight the window of opportunity for green investments and transitions to recover from the pandemic and to prevent future crises (Interview 1, 2, 6). The pandemic has led to such wide-ranging socio-economic implications that almost any previously planned initiative could now be presented as part of member states’ COVID-19 response strategies. In addition, the design of Team Europe allowed for different priorities to fit under the same roof and did not require the Commission and member states to change their strategic choices. Member states had the opportunity to actively shape Team Europe and TEIs’ content and decide on the TEIs they wanted to contribute to without having to work out a substantive shared policy strategy in advance. Another reason for this strategic continuity is that the EU’s key policies, such as the European Green Deal, had been adopted before the pandemic and were considered transformational in pushing the EU’s climate policy (Dupont, Oberthür, and von Homeyer 2020). They were therefore deemed politically non-negotiable, and staying on course was seen as an expression of the EU’s strategic resolve to pursue them.

4. Explaining the outcome

Based on the above descriptive findings, this section probes the empirical puzzle as to why the EU opted for closer coordination in EU development policy in response to the pandemic, as compared to previous crisis responses where the EU mainly reacted with budgetary means or adaptation of its strategy. We identified four explanatory factors that we expected to play a role in EU institutional change processes and consequently tested these in our interviews. Each of these four factors is explained in turn, after which the interaction between them and the associated emergence of Team Europe is considered.

1) Policy entrepreneurship. As per the famous Churchill quote, one should never let a good crisis goes to waste. This was most certainly the Commission’s ambition, which had just seen a change in leadership and was seeking to reform the EU’s development policy – encapsulated in the renaming of the European Commissioner’s post to being in charge of ‘International Partnerships’. In the weeks before the start of the pandemic, the Director General of the administration had been consulting with member states to identify cooperation ‘flagships’ of high political priority that brought together EU and member state cooperation projects (Keijzer et al. 2021). These were Team Europe approaches ‘avant la lettre’, and the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and the EU’s pressure to provide a response were seen as adding to the need to take these flagships further – eventually developing into Team Europe Initiatives.

By spearheading and designing Team Europe and proposing a joint external response to the pandemic in the form of Team Europe, and by ‘moving first’ through reprogramming its 2020 planned development finance expenditure in the first weeks after the pandemic reached the EU, the Commission well-positioned itself to build on this initial Team Europe response during the first wave of the pandemic (see Burni et al. 2022). In the following weeks, the member states rewarded the Commission’s policy entrepreneurship by mandating the Commission as a master of ceremony in taking the next step: preparing the EU’s medium- to long-term cooperation priorities whilst making dedicated efforts to identify synergies with the member states. This happened both ‘bottom-up’ with the EU Delegations in the lead and also in the form of regional TEIs that were prepared in Brussels and other European capitals. At the same time, the Commission also ‘codified’ emerging understandings of what Team Europe meant, which selection criteria should inform the selection of initiatives, and kept the overview of the joint responses that were prepared (Keijzer et al. 2021).

The Commission’s entrepreneurial approach was also expressed by a relatively flexible approach to preparing the TEIs. This approach, as opposed to proposing a ready-made and fixed process, helped to keep all member states on board. Keeping the process open at first, the Commission ensured a close monitoring of all suggested TEIs, which were shared regularly with the member states in the informal grouping of EU Directors General. This meeting format concerned a regular yet informal exchange round to discuss current issues in EU development policy. While falling short of a formal adoption of the TEIs, these regular Directors General meetings were chosen as a suitably high-level forum to provide some kind of endorsement of the plans concerned (Keijzer et al. 2021). As a subsequent step, the Multi-Annual Indicative Plans prepared by the EU institutions included a dedicated section describing TEIs, when applicable, which subsequently were adopted by the member states through comitology.

2) Prevalence of member states’ interests and national sovereignty. Another angle towards understanding the coordination patterns described above is through further inquiring the volition of member states to support the discussions and contribute to the Commission-facilitated process. It can be argued that member states stand to benefit financially and institutionally from supporting and participating in Team Europe. This is especially the case for member states with larger implementing agencies present in various partner countries which may be involved in some of the Commission-funded future programmes. Member states’ associated costs with closer coordination were thus mitigated through direct benefits. Furthermore, the process offered sufficient flexibility to member states regarding the regions in which they could be active and the possibility to associate their ongoing projects with the new EU initiative. One specific example was the discussion on non-financial ways of participation, which demonstrates a move away from earlier approaches that emphasised getting total financial volumes for TEIs and discouraged participation by member states with small bilateral Official Development Assistance budgets (Keijzer et al. 2021).

In this context, rather than primarily supporting the soft road towards further development policy convergence and integration, the EU member states had more pragmatic and instrumental motives in mind. By seeking greater convergence and matches between their bilateral programmes and EU programmes in TEIs, some member states sought to promote the involvement of their national organisations in delivering the EU programmes. In addition to potential returns for member states, it can also be argued that there were limited real costs to member states’ involvement in Team Europe in the sense that the initial phase prioritised the visibility gains that could be made by jointly packaging and presenting EU and member state programmes covering specific topics in specific countries and regions. The limited adjustment costs were consciously promoted by the Commission’s April 2020 proposal that included a broad definition of the short- and long-term COVD-19 needs and concerns of developing countries that the EU sought to support (Burni et al., 2022). Furthermore, the subsequent use of the motto ‘build back better’ provided an inclusive label for the EU and its member states’ support and catered to those member states with development policy preferences that emphasised the environmental dimension of sustainable development along with those that did not.

The inclusive and flexible approach that characterises Team Europe processes to date, however, means that actual coordination costs in terms of further joint planning and implementation choices may still be incurred by member states at a later stage in the process, depending on the level of ambition and next steps in specific contexts. This risk was illustrated by earlier research indicating that Commission and member state officials had different views as to whether Team Europe processes should at a next stage lead to more structured and ambitious ‘joint programming’ as a next stage (Keijzer et al. 2021).

2) Low level of politicisation. Following the understanding of politicisation as introduced earlier in the article as a three-dimensional approach involving increasing salience, the polarisation of opinion and the expansion of actors and audiences involved in EU issues (Hackenesch, Bergmann, and Orbie 2021), we find a low level of polarisation (defined as the scope of conflict over an issue) regarding the EU’s global response to the pandemic.

COVID-19 led to lower levels of disagreement over whether to use aid for the EU’s global crisis response. Despite the attempts of radical parties to denounce the use of aid in light of the scale of support needed for European economies (see Bergmann et al. 2021), there was a broad public and political understanding that supporting developing countries in managing the pandemic will also benefit the fight against the pandemic in Europe (Burni et al., 2022). As the level of polarisation was significantly lower than in past crisis situations, based on the acknowledgement that significant scale was needed to address the pandemic’s global reach, the Commission was able to win member states’ support for closer cooperation. With little discussion or controversies over development funds being used for that purpose in parliaments, civil society or the media, member states’ civil servants were able to focus on the creation and implementation of Team Europe and on closer cooperation at EU level.

3) Geopolitical landscape. A key driver for the creation of Team Europe was geopolitical considerations. The pandemic created a situation in which the EU felt it needed to expand its scope and to demonstrate visibility of its support in partner countries. Particularly in light of the geopolitical competitions with China, the EU saw itself forced to demonstrate that it was capable of delivering not just promises but results. Team Europe can therefore also be seen as a defensive reaction to correct the perception that the EU was not doing enough to support developing countries in their response to the pandemic (Burni et al. 2022). This explanation is confirmed by previous research that highlights that the competition with China for the ultimate authority to interpret the crisis and actors’ reactions to it according to their respective values, interests and worldview, was a strong impetus for introducing Team Europe (Keijzer et al. 2021). Pointing to the geopolitical void left by the United States and China’s willingness to assume a bigger role on the global stage, Team Europe was presented as a key instrument to increase the EU’s geopolitical resilience through the mobilisation of strategic resources for humanitarian and development aid as well as the EU’s insistence on global accessibility of COVID-19 vaccines and medicines (EC, 2020c p. 14).

Interrelations between the four factors

When introducing the intervening variables at the beginning of the article, we expected a strong interaction of the four variables to be decisive for a positive outcome. This is confirmed by our empirical analysis. The pandemic created a situation of shock, and its scale was interpreted as too immense and wide-ranging for the Commission and member states to address individually. The magnitude and unpredictability of the pandemic created a sense of urgency for the Commission and for member states to step up the game with all involved considering that there was no alternative to this course of action. Compared to previous crisis situations, member states and the EC had a joint interpretation of the crisis and the measures needed to address it, which included a shared ambition to develop and communicate joint cooperation efforts with the aim to increase collective visibility. In addition, the geopolitical situation and concerns over Chinese dominance in global COVID support led to a greater push for European visibility and scale. The Commission’s policy entrepreneurship and understanding of its manoeuvring space was a decisive factor in opening the door to its proposal of Team Europe. Yet, this proposal was only successful because it integrated member states’ interests and allowed them sufficient flexibility in shaping the content which secured their willingness to follow the Commission’s ideas and process. Member states’ support for Team Europe was possible as the usual costs associated with closer coordination, in particular with regard to visibility, were outweighed by geopolitical concerns over the visibility of ‘Europe’ as a whole and by a shared conviction that a European response could not be piecemeal but required greater scale. In addition, the financial and institutional interests of the member states were largely preserved and particularly those member states with larger implementing agencies present in various partner countries welcomed the opportunity to be involved in some of the Commission-funded future programmes. This positive interaction between the Commission and the member states was contextualized by low levels of politicisation. Both the Commission and member states were not pressured by a high political or public interest in parliaments, media or civil society. Debates surrounding the appropriate use of development resources were largely absent or the provision of aid was considered necessary to end the pandemic on a global level. The level of polarisation was thus significantly lower than in past crisis situations, which contributed to an environment in which development bureaucrats in member state capitals were able to focus on improved coordination and the Commission’s proposals without external interference.

Conclusions

This article analysed to what extent the EU’s external response to the COVID-19 pandemic, communicated under the label ‘Team Europe’, represents a critical juncture for the EU’s development policy in terms of creating conditions for institutional change. It explored why, contrary to past crisis situations which the EU mainly addressed via its budget or by adapting its strategy, its reaction to the pandemic improved coordination between the EU and its member states. The article’s overall conclusion is that the pandemic indeed triggered a critical juncture for how the EU and the member states coordinate their actions while at the same time leaving little mark on the strategic orientation of member states’ development policies. We explain this outcome by analysing four intervening variables: (i) the policy entrepreneurship of the European Commission in spearheading the idea of Team Europe and in successfully convincing member states of this initiative, (ii) the Team Europe’s alignment with member states’ national interests, more concretely limited real costs and potential financial returns; (iii) the low level of politicisation and wide agreement on the need for global investment to end the pandemic and (iv) the geopolitical context which pushed Europe’s desire for greater visibility and scale of its aid interventions.

While the Commission’s policy entrepreneurship and member states’ interests are well-studied factors in EU decision-making processes, the contextual factors of low levels of politicisation and a changed geopolitical landscape are distinctive factors that allowed for a joined response under Team Europe to emerge. In a situation in which the Commission showed a high degree of policy entrepreneurship in conjunction with geopolitical pressure for visibility, member states’ preserved interests, and low salience and degree of politicisation change became possible. Overall, we find that a shared desire for strengthening the EU’s visibility against the background of a tense geopolitical situation combined without the need for policy convergence provided an enabling and pragmatic environment that facilitated further change. Although it cannot yet be considered a significant step towards greater European integration in the field of development policy – i.e. a positive outcome that the critical juncture might lead to –, Team Europe can be considered ‘integration by stealth’ as it creates conditions that make such a change more likely and desirable, providing that its momentum is maintained over time.

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the GIZ that enabled the empirical research on which this article draws. They also are grateful to Julian Bergmann, Jan Orbie and Sebastian Steingass for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this publication, as well as to the anonymous reviewers. Initial findings of the research conducted under this project were presented in the following discussion paper: Koch, S., Friesen, I., Keijzer, N. (2021) EU development policy as a crisis-response tool? Prospects and challenges for linking the EU’s COVID-19 response to the green transition. Discussion Paper 27/2021. Bonn: Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit.

Notes

1. While considered an existential crisis to the EU, the Union’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is beyond the focus and scope of this article. Albeit involving macro-economic support and entailing joint provision of military support from the European Peace Facility – which itself evolved from the African Peace Facility – the volatile nature of the active conflict means that no active development policy response has been formulated.

2. Team Europe: Where Member States Scale Up Impact | AFD – Agence Française de Développement.

3. https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/team-europe-standing-stronger-together_en

Annex 1: List of interviews

• Interview 1: two Member State officials

• Interview 2: three Member State officials

• Interview 3: one Member State official

• Interview 4: one Member State official

• Interview 5: one Member State official

• Interview 6: one Member State official

• Interview 7: one Commission official

• Interview 8: one EEAS official