The EU’s participation in international cooperation and partnerships is carried out in a strategic way to achieve EU political priorities in a way that aligns with the UN 2030 Agenda and its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

The aim of these partnerships is ultimately to ensure better synergies between EU foreign policy objectives and external instruments, going beyond financial assistance to jointly deliver more compelling and tailor-made offers that serve the strategic interests of the EU.  

The European Commission's Political Guidelines for 2024-2029 affirm that Europe needs to be more assertive in pursuing its global interests by leveraging its economic power and international partnerships; EU enlargement is a geopolitical imperative, with flagship initiatives including the New Pact for the Mediterranean representing a more strategic approach to the EU's neighbouring countries.

The Global Gateway strategy, announced by President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen in September 2021, supports smart, clean and secure initiatives within the digital, energy and transport sectors to strengthen health, education and research systems across the world. Global Gateway aims to mobilise up to €300 billion in investments.

Fragility

Fragility is an increasingly urgent concern for the European Union, driven by the growing scale and complexity of crises worldwide. The number of fragile contexts has risen substantially over the past decade. Out of 177 contexts assessed for fragility by the OECD, 61 were identified as experiencing high or extreme fragility, affecting 25% of the world’s population and hosting 72% of the world’s extremely poor people. A large part of these are trapped in protracted crises and are increasingly in need of humanitarian assistance. Addressing fragility is essential to fostering stability, resilience, and shared prosperity. 

The EU continues to engage in fragile and conflict-affected states through tailored partnerships to address the drivers of fragility and instability and support sustainable development. Inaction risks severe geopolitical instability and worsening poverty. The complexity of many fragile and conflict-affected contexts underline the importance of a joint response that address humanitarian needs as well as development and peace-building challenges, in line with the humanitarian-development-peace nexus.

Fragile contexts generate the majority of the world’s refugees, migrants and internally displaced persons. Addressing fragility through engagement with partner countries, including tackling root causes and offering legal alternatives, is key to reducing the incentives for irregular migration and the dangerous journeys often associated with these. 

As resources are under strain, harnessing Team Europe as well as deepening collaboration between the EU, the World Bank, and the United Nations are important elements in complex and fragility settings.

Human development

Currently, more than ever, the world needs effective multilateralism, with a reformed UN at its core, and a rules-based international order that defends universal values, promotes shared public goods and delivers benefits for all.

In this crucial Decade of Action, the EU stands ready to step up efforts to achieve the SDGs by 2030. The SDGs are thus at the heart of our EU policymaking on internal and external action across all sectors and serve as our joint roadmap going forward, put face a financing gap of more than $4 trillion per year.

Together with Member States, the EU has made a collective commitment to increase support to human development and social inclusion focusing on education, health systems’ strengthening, social protection and other basic social services to reach at least 20% of Official Development Assistance (ODA) in the ‘Global Europe’ instrument. The priority will be on areas in human development, where investments can have the most transformative effect.

Education is at the very heart of EU development cooperation. The state of education systems and access to education has been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic globally, especially the education of girls, children of vulnerable groups and access to digital education. Addressing these key areas in our partner countries is therefore even more necessary than before.

In a world facing growing inequalities, demographic shifts, and rapid technological transformation, the need for a renewed commitment to social progress has never been more urgent. The EU aims at ensuring accelerated action on poverty eradication, social inclusion, the promotion of full employment and decent work, ensuring that no one is left behind. In this respect, the European Union welcomes the Second World Summit for Social Development, taking place in Doha, Qatar, from 4 to 6 November 2025.
 

The world is facing a global food crisis, triggered by climate change, conflicts, consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, and significantly aggravated by Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine. The number of people acutely food insecure has reached a record level of around 222 million in 2022 (Global Report on Food Crisis of September 2022). According to the UN, hunger levels are higher than ever before with 45 million people in 37 countries at the edge of starvation or already in famine conditions.

The most affected people live in countries highly dependent on grain exports from Ukraine and Russia (mainly in the Middle East and North Africa), as well as in countries highly vulnerable to food insecurity (notably from Sub-Saharan Africa). Of highest concern are the “hunger hotspots”, including those at risk of famine - Somalia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Nigeria. Others such as Pakistan and Syria have also been particularly impacted.

Find out more

Global Gateway is Europe’s offer to build sustainable and secure links that bring lasting benefits for people, economies and countries without indebting future generations and an effective contribution to achieving the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals. It is the EU’s brand and overall strategic and political framework, putting a roof over the external dimensions of the Green Deal, the Digital Agenda and the priorities that have steered our work since the start of this Commission. Global Gateway is financed and implemented in a Team Europe approach.

Global Gateway, announced by EC President Von Der Leyen in September 2021,  is Europe’s response to the global infrastructure gap and the challenges of building back better following the Covid-19 pandemics. It builds on our own internal experience – the EU is itself a product of connectivity, and now the NextGenerationEU and national recovery plans are boosting the green and digital transitions of our Member States. We offer our partners expertise and resources, with both traditional and innovative financing instruments, to support their green, digital, just and resilient recovery.   Global Gateway aims at boosting smart, clean and secure links in digital, energy and transport sectors and to strengthen health, education and research systems across the world, by investing in physical sustainable infrastructure and people-to-people approaches

Global Gateway seeks an interconnected approach to our partnerships, which takes further the objective in our financial instrument Global Europe to “address interlinkages between the SDGs, to promote integrated actions that can create co-benefits and meet multiple objectives in a coherent way”. In addition, Global Gateway enabling sectors (democratic values, high standards, good governance and transparency, business climate) contribute to the whole SDG framework, especially SDGs 5, 8, 10, 16 and 17.

Global Gateway

Global Gateway flagships are key connectivity operations of geopolitical relevance supporting EU strategic interests aligned with our partners’ priorities and our political dialogues, strengthening links and promoting convergence of norms and standards and demonstrating the positive offer that Europe as a reliable partner can deliver. Beside these flagships, there is a larger range of other initiatives and projects, which will all contribute to the ambitious objective of mobilising up to EUR 300 billion of investments between 2021 and 2027, as announced in December 2021. For implementing the Global Gateway strategy and flagships, European actors join forces in a Team Europe approach, mainly through Team Europe Initiatives (TEIs). In practice, this means the contribution by and the joining of efforts with Member States (including their Development Finance Institutions and agencies in the area of development; but also export credit agencies: the EIB and the EBRD are just as critical as the contribution from the EU budget.

More info at https://www.eeas.europa.eu/eeas/global-gateway_en