Which objective(s) does the Commission pursue?

The objective of the Commission proposal for the Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument was to uphold and promote the Union’s values and interests worldwide in order to pursue the objectives and principles of its external action, as laid down in Article 3(5), Articles 8 and 21 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU).

Reviews and evaluations of the existing external instruments have shown their added value and relevance. However, they have also highlighted opportunities for improvements, in particular the need to simplify ways of working and to enable the EU to respond to unforeseen circumstances with greater flexibility. The lessons learned taken together with growing challenges have prompted the Commission to propose modifying the architecture of the external financing instruments, and to incorporate the activities currently financed by the European Development Fund in the budget. Through this, the EU would continue to be able to play an active role in promoting human rights, stabilisation, development, security, fighting root causes of irregular migration, trade, the fight against climate change and the protection of the environment among other issues. However, it will be able to do so in a more comprehensive way while providing more flexibility to move resources to where they are needed as the international context changes.

In line with the Communication ‘A new, modern Multiannual Financial Framework for a European Union that delivers efficiently on its priorities post-2020’and as concluded in the impact assessment¹⁰ that accompanies the Commission’s proposal, several instruments under the Global Europe heading of the Multiannual Financial Framework 2014 - 2020, should be streamlined into one broad instrument. This provide an opportunity to rationalise management and oversight systems, and so reduce the administrative burden for EU institutions and Member States.

In addition, actions that receive cumulative funding from different Union programmes should be audited only once, covering all involved programmes and their respective applicable rules. Simplification does not mean there would be less scrutiny or accountability. In terms of aligning rules, incorporating provisions from the Common Implementing Regulation will give the new instrument a coherent set of principles across all its component parts and will make it easier to understand for partners and implementing agents.

A broad instrument would provide a more geographically and thematically comprehensive approach, facilitating the implementation of different policies in a trans-regional, multi-sectoral and global way.

Overlaps would be eliminated, in particular those between the current Partnership Instrument and Development Cooperation Instrument, in relation to cooperation with more advanced development countries, and between the geographic and thematic programmes (e.g. the European Development Fund geographic programmes and the Development Cooperation Instrument thematic programmes).

When carrying out the evaluations of the existing external financing instruments, three types of consultations with stakeholders took place. Evaluators carried out around one thousand structured or semi-structured interviews with EU officials and representatives from EU institutions, Member States and partner countries. Several technical workshops were also organised. The main messages emerging from the consulted stakeholders are summarised below:

· Flexibility: stakeholders agreed that the new financing instruments should be more flexible to respond to unforeseeable challenges and crises. In particular, they underlined the need to facilitate the shifting of funds across regions and among aid modalities. However, it was also underlined that increasing flexibility should not come at the cost of weakened predictability, country ownership and less focus on achieving long-term development objectives. To ensure flexibility and predictability some respondents argued in favour of having sufficient reserves. 

· Coherence: stakeholders considered it necessary to ensure greater coherence between the internal and external policies of the EU, as well as between the external instruments themselves. Some emphasized the need to strengthen complementarity and synergy between geographical and thematic programmes. Others argued that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide the most appropriate basis for increasing coherence between internal and external policies. Most recommended that the EU take a leading role in improving complementarity between various stakeholders both inside and outside the EU. 

On the structuring of future instruments, stakeholders agreed that the combination of geographic and thematic programmes delivers positive results. They emphasised that the value of geographically structured instruments lies in their capacity to address the specific needs of partner countries in a tailored manner. This is crucial given the diversity of the challenges and needs across these countries. 

While being in favour of having both geographic and thematic programmes, stakeholders also drew attention to the need for more complementarity. Some respondents highlighted the risk of overlap whereby the same policy objectives are funded by multiple instruments. Respondents also called for a clear delineation between instruments, while underlining the need to ensure that geographic and thematic programmes exploit cross-sectoral synergies and linkages between themselves.

· Simplification: the EU was strongly encouraged to further simplify the overall architecture of the instruments. The EU should also continue its efforts to simplify cumbersome administrative and financial procedures. It was emphasised by civil society and local authorities that procedures and rules in place have important implications for the ability of civil society and local authorities to become more involved in development cooperation.

· Leverage: there was an agreement among stakeholders that innovative financing instruments can play an important role in leveraging public and private financing for EU external assistance. Positive findings on the leverage effects and financial additionality of such instruments emerging from the evaluation on blending are considered encouraging. However, civil society respondents raised concerns about private sector priorities overriding poverty reduction objectives in partner countries.

Estimated savings and benefits:

The mid-term review report on the external financing instruments¹¹ and the above-mentioned impact assessment point to positive trends emerging in relation to achieving results. However, difficulties in measuring such achievements were noted. There was often limited information on monitoring systems referred to in the instruments. There was a lack of data (including baselines) to measure if the instruments were on track to meet some of their objectives (particularly the high-level ones), and an understanding that many external factors (e.g. partner country policies and other donors) influence achievement of the objectives. The wide-ranging nature of both the objectives and the partner countries covered by the instruments also made meaningful aggregation of data challenging.

^[10] SWD (2018) 337 final

^[11] COM (2017) 720 final

Outcome of Legislative Procedure

The adopted NDICI-Global Europe regulation retained all major aspects of the Commission proposal. As a result, a number of previous external financing instruments, including the instrument covering the Neighbourhood region, as well as the European Development Fund have been streamlined into NDICI-Global Europe. Moreover, the European Fund for Sustainable Development Plus (EFSD+) and the European Action Guarantee (EAG) have been created within NDICI-Global Europe to boost the impact of the funds.

Furthermore, a delegated act has been adopted to set out: 1) specific objectives and priority areas for the NDICI-Global Europe sub-regions, 2) indicative thematic targets for the geographic pillar and 3) indicative financial allocations for West Africa, East and Central Africa, Southern Africa and Indian Ocean sub-regions.

Changes to the initial text resulting from the negotiations do not substantially modify the content of the Commission proposal in terms of structure. Their purpose was to clarify the scope of certain articles, to fine-tune the priorities promoted by the instrument (for instance climate, migration, human development, etc.), to take into account the outcome of the 2021-2027 MFF negotiations and to ensure coherence with other external financing instruments.

Estimated savings and benefits

The NDICI-Global Europe regulation, as adopted, has streamlined several previous external financing instruments. Reducing the number of existing instruments, as well as integrating the European Development Fund into the EU budget provided for simplification and increased coherence between the internal and external policies of the EU, as well as between the external instruments themselves. The structure of the instrument allows also for greater flexibility enabling the instrument to respond to unforeseeable challenges and crises.