Remarks by Commissioner Urpilainen at the exchange of views with the European Parliament's Committee on Development (DEVE)

Remarks by Urpilainen at the exchange of views with DEVE

Honourable Chair,

Honourable Members,

Let me start by congratulating all of you on your appointment to this important Committee – and I am pleased to see some familiar faces, including the Chair, as well as many new members.

When I began my mandate in 2019, I was tasked with driving a paradigm shift in the EU's international development policy.

To steer us away from the traditional donor/recipient model and instead cultivate partnerships based on equal footing and mutual interest.

The EU ambitioned to become more geopolitical and to advance a unique partnership offer, which is based on democratic values, supports global progress towards the Sustainable Development Agenda, tackles inequalities and strengthens the resilience of our partners and the EU alike.

Over the past five years, we have come a long way towards that goal.

I would like to make three points.

First, around the world, Covid-19 reminded us that we are all connected. It also revealed vivid inequalities, with low-income countries struggling the hardest to recover.

It challenged the world to take action and the EU responded decisively.

We developed the Team Europe approach it to enhance coordination, efficiency, and our collective impact. It pools the resources and expertise of the EU, its 27 Member States, their financial institutions, private sector and civil society.

Together, Team Europe mobilized EUR 53.7 billion to help partner countries with pandemic relief and recovery efforts.

It has become the backbone of our engagement with international partners and the delivery model behind our Global Gateway strategy. This brings me to my second point.

In 2021, we launched Global Gateway to support smart, clean, and secure links in the digital, energy, and transport sectors, and to strengthen health, education, and research systems across the world.

Global Gateway represents Europe's contribution to narrowing the financing gap to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals – which is about EUR 4 trillion annually, according to the OECD.

Global Gateway leverages Team Europe funds and, beyond the traditional forms of financing, it uses guarantees and measures to reduce risk and attract private sector investment where this is relevant.

In this way, we aim to mobilise EUR 300 billion of public and private investment by 2027.

Global Gateway is both quantitative and qualitive offer. It promotes high social, environmental, and financial standards.

It creates links, not dependencies, and boosts strategic autonomy for us and our partners.

Investments in hard infrastructure go hand in hand with human development, skills, institutional capacity building and improvements in the regulatory environment.

During successful summits with the African Union, ASEAN, and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, we agreed on substantial Global Gateway investment packages.

As we prepare for the Summit of the Future in three weeks, we must stress that there are today 225 Global Gateway flagship projects around the globe, delivering on all 17 Sustainable Development goals.

Finally, the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument (NDICI) accompanied the change of paradigm with its flexibility and integration of the European Development Fund.

The ambitions of the Global Gateway strategy have been now fully integrated in the proposed outcome of the mid-term review of NDICI-Global Europe programming.

A more strategic programming is reflected in the reinforcement of regional Multi-annual Indicative Programmes (MIPs). We have created dedicated investments and new envelopes for fragile countries in Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and the Pacific for wider impact and enhanced support capacity.

The MTR has been impacted by the revision of the Multiannual Financial Framework. In this regard, I welcome the support of the Committee to the linear cut on NDICI-Global Europe for 2025-2027 envelopes.

Honourable Members,

To conclude, I would like to emphasise how important our cooperation with the EP, and in particular this Committee, has been.

Global Gateway and Team Europe are just two of many accomplishments.

With Parliament's support, we signed the historic Samoa Agreement, paving the way for successful partnership between the EU and the 79 countries in Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, where I was last week.

In line with my personal commitment, we increased investment in education from 7% to at least 10% of the international partnerships budget.

We launched the first-ever Youth Action Plan in External Action, empowering the largest generation of young people in history.

We made huge strides on empowering women – today 72% of EU external actions have gender equality as a main or significant objective.

And we increased transparency and accountability, conducting the first EU voluntary review in external action, and even creating a new marker to monitor inequalities.

Together, we have advanced an ambitious social, democratic, and environmental agenda.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts.