On the occasion of the annual meeting of Practitioners' Network for European Development Cooperation (9-10 May in Madrid), the European network of development implementing agencies, we talked to Anna Terrón (outgoing president) of FIIAPP and Jerémie Pellet (incoming president) of Expertise France.


Barham Nardo
Thank you both so much for coming in. I know you must have a very busy schedule with these meetings with the Practitioners’ Network, which makes me all the more appreciative of your time. Given that this is the annual summit. I’m very curious to begin by asking what were some of the primary topics of discussion during this first day of meeting? What are some of the issues on the agenda for this year? And furthermore, how do you think these geoeconomic and geopolitical tensions have changed the dynamic of this year’s conference?

Anna Terrón
Okay, well, if I may, first, this is the annual practical stage of our network. Last year’s presidency was from our organisation, FIIAPP, and we are going to convey all the necessary tools needed for Expertise France to take the presidency for the coming year during this very meeting. I must say that, yes, things have changed in the last year. I don’t know whether you agree, but I think that we are in a situation in which the geopolitical situation demands more and more of the existing agencies, demands better strategic view, demands a strong capacity of working together and positioning you in the world. That’s what we’ve seen in our conversations with other agencies and with the Commission all along this year, especially because of the war in Ukraine, but not only that.

Jerémie Pellet 
Yeah. I think we are at an interesting time where the efforts of Europe on international cooperation and development have never been as high on the global effort for development.

€140,000,000 last year, more than €70 million were actually given by Europe and the member states. So, half of the global efforts for cooperation is from Europe, and most of it, a large part of it, is directed to the least developed countries, in particular in Africa.

And what we saw, I think, due to war in Ukraine is both a need to reinforce our cooperation with the eastern part of Europe and Ukraine.

And at the same time, do not forget the effort we make for the least developed countries and the most vulnerable countries, which will suffer from climate change, from global risks. And that tension. We can feel that tension today, and that’s one of the issues we will discuss tomorrow with the European Commission -- both international partnership direction for international partnership and the general direction for the neighbouring countries of the country.

Barham Nardo
Brilliant. Well, that’s fascinating. And as FIIAPP is finishing its time as in the presidency of this organisation, and Expertise France will take the reins, what has been the largest challenge for you this past year?

Anna Terrón
The largest challenge was to keep working for a more consistent architecture of development in Europe. That means permanent conversation between our agencies, internally and with the European Commission. And probably the most challenging has been to work for the inclusion of all kinds of actors of corporations, both big and small, in addition to different kinds of agencies. One of the new agencies we are welcoming today, for instance, is the Lithuanian agency for cooperation. New agencies expect a lot of the Practitioners’s Network because it’s their family. I mean it’s the place in which they can really become an EU actor. At the same time, it’s been a challenge to keep track, as Jerémie said, of a lot of new realities that have popped up here and there in our agencies, not only in the network but in our agencies. We had to adapt to many changes in Africa, for instance, in the region of the Sahel. It’s not our job to decide what kind of political action we can or cannot do there, but it is our job to engage there in cooperation, and that has been very difficult, and that has demanded a lot of adaptability because of changes in the region and to constantly adapt to new realities like Latin America.

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Latin America was not the centre of the European world in terms of international relations but after the Ukraine work and the need to have more allies, it’s now becoming increasingly important. So, in the three areas, I mean: geographically, adapting the way of cooperation, and keeping track in building an inclusive system, a structured system of cooperation in the European Union with our strategic challenges. Then we can dive into more concrete challenges of our organisation and so on. But I would keep these three areas as a reference point.

Barham Nardo
I see, and the Practitioners’ Network is such a far-reaching network, it’s important to have a comprehensive strategic vision. So, I would like to ask you what exactly will be the priority of this upcoming presidency? Speaking in organisational terms, do you seek to reinforce the existing institutions, or do you look to expand and incorporate new agencies for international cooperation and development?

Jerémie Pellet
Well, we will continue the efforts of FIIAPP and our Dutch colleagues to reinforce the structure of cooperation agencies in Europe. Actually, the architecture of the European Union in terms of development is rich and complicated. As I mentioned earlier, it’s half of the official development made in the world. So, we have 27 countries in Europe plus the European Commission. And within the countries you have a network of agencies making loans for the government, you have agencies working with the private sector in terms of development, and you have agencies with a mandate of technical cooperation. And for the three different types of agencies, you have different types of networks structuring the relationships between the members to make sure that at the end of the day the European system is effectively working well. So, our job will be to continue in that effort, in that structuration effort, which is interesting because this view of Europe is natural.So just to speak from a bit of a historical perspective, this vision of Europe working together for development and international cooperation is actually recent. Until 2007, so not a long time ago, the European Union did not work massively with its member states, which is surprising.

But actually, that was the way Europe was previously structured. Since 2007 and that’s actually the date of the creation of the Practitioners’ Network, and FIIAPP and Expertise France were part of it. Since 2007, Europe started to work with the big cooperation agencies. And since then, the next big step was two years ago, when Europe decided to implement what it calls Team Europe Initiative, i.e., working as a team in the field under the same umbrella and the same European flag. So I would say that’s the second step of the structuration of the European architecture of development. And probably the next step will be to make sure that this entire system works well and is able to be as agile and flexible to respond rapidly to the needs of our member countries. That’s the general view, and that’s the general effort where we as a network are supporting this vision of structuring Europe.

Barham Nardo
Well, it’s brilliant to hear that in the past decade, this movement has had so much not only success, but still has growing momentum. Ana if I may ask, and looking at some of the work from the practitioners that work a little bit more concretely, are there any particular countries or regions which have had the most success in growing these development initiatives, or are there any projects in the past several years that really stand out as particularly important?

Anna Terrón
Well, I would say that the network itself is not responsible for the projects per se. So the agencies, we cooperate with each other, and we work together in different aspects relating to these projects. In terms of regions, it’s not very different. What would you say, Jerémie? 

Jerémie Pellet
Well, I think to take a few examples of success of European cooperation with its partner countries, I would say Latin America is a good example where we have a very fruitful cooperation, technical cooperation with our Latin American partners on social issues, for example, gender, social protection, on climate issues, or even on criminal issues. Justice, police, et cetera. So, a very, I would say, comprehensive partnership.

Anna Terrón
And also digital now.

Jerémie Pellet
Yes and now digital. So a very comprehensive partnership mobilising a lot of member states and a lot of member state agencies. So that would be my first example. 

My second example is the action we have now on entrepreneurship and digital initiatives in Africa. For example, with the Team Europe Initiative ‘Young Business in Africa’, mobilising seven member state agencies working on structuring the ecosystems of entrepreneurships in Africa, which is a continent where you have a lot of startups, a lot of young people who want to start the business and face a lot of difficulties with that. And this is where there is a clear added value to share our experience at the level of the EU in Africa, I would say.

Anna Terrón
That for us in Latin America, it’s easier to do technical cooperation. And what we both do is public sector cooperation, meaning that we can talk and work together with our partners at better institutions, better public policies, better administration, which can make a safer space and safer ecosystem for development.

Because at the end of the day, you need public systems, you need taxes, you need public policies, you need administration structure. And that’s what we do.

In other areas of the world, as Jerémie has said, there are also other agencies doing different things. Like in Africa, for instance, we are trying to invest a lot of money to make a difference there. In that area, I think that we are looking forward to having a more consistent approach, meaning that we can do a lot in terms of technical assistance besides loans, investment, et cetera. And we’ve been working very much during the last one year on that. And we call that a ‘policy-first’ approach, meaning that money is fine, but money itself is not going to make a difference. So, you need a policy-first approach in order to know in which ecosystem, in which situation you are going to make an investment in whatever term that could make a difference.



So, we are also trying to work along with our different system of agencies providing that very public policy assistance. And I think that the numbers we gave are very valid because in all of them, especially in Latin America, we could do something we call ‘policy dialogue’.

Not political dialogue, but policy dialogue, meaning that we are engaging each other in a permanent dialogue of how things can be in terms of institutions and public policies.

And I think that that made a difference in some of our projects. 

It’s maybe a distinct approach from micro-level projects such as building a school, which is still important work. But if you can build or help build public institutions of education themselves, public policy education, you will make sure that that very school will be there and will be far more useful. Otherwise, it can be empty, as it happened in Afghanistan when the third countries left. So, I think this is one of the reasons why those projects were very successful. And we look forward to people in this kind of cooperation.

Barham Nardo
Brilliant. Well, you’ve touched on several important issues and aspects of this interesting dynamic. And what really catches my attention is the institutional framework, your work in Latin America and Africa particularly because we see China is also conducting investments, but it’s using it almost more as a leverage. Whereas the European Union has a goal of not only making these third countries prosperous, but also helping to solidify the Union as a whole. So, I would like to ask you to detail a little bit more the strategic added value and cooperation with Latin America through this organisation of different networks. What special advantages and benefits does the European Union have that makes it more effective than, as you were saying, taking a more micro-focused approach which China has been doing in these countries? How does it help these developing countries truly develop and not just harness their resources.

Jerémie Pellet
I would say that in order to have a more effective cooperation and to have a real European signature on cooperation, today we have three issues to deal with. The first one is to have more cooperation in partnerships. Interestingly enough, the General Directorate for International Cooperation in Brussels is now called ‘International Partnership’. It’s the same for the Ministry of Development and Cooperation in France. It’s now a ‘Secretary of State for International Partners’, which emphasises the fact that the relation with our partner country should be as equal as possible, and the demands should come from the partner. So that’s the first point. The second issue is mobilisation, i.e., the official development aid is not enough to face the global challenges of development. We know that we need to leverage other resources: private money from the companies, from large companies, public money from the public development banks, and local domestic resources because at the end of the day the development will need to be sustainable based on the countries’ own resources. So that issue of mobilisation means that our action should not only focus on offering large investments such as other large countries, as China may sometimes propose, but the whole package of development with the issue of mobilising the right money for sustainable goals at the end of the day.

And the third issue is to have a more geopolitical view for the European Union. That’s why the European Union has developed this concept of the ‘Global Gateway’ to express the support to the international partners, which is a response to the Chinese offer, insisting on all the added value of Europe. And the added value of Europe is also, as Anna mentioned earlier, the fact that we are able to work with financing and also technical assistance altogether to make sure that the public policies in the long term are reinforced. That’s what we want to do at the level of the practitioner network, working with the other networks in Europe, dealing with public banks and private sector banks. That’s also what we’ve done in France. Actually, France has decided to move all the agencies in charge of development within the same umbrella. So, we have IFA dealing with public counterparties and financing the countries, we have Proparco dealing with the private sector, and Expertise France, the technical expertise agency, altogether. So we have this experience that we are leading for the last two years that we want to share with the other members of the network to make sure that at the end of the day this European network of agencies is more efficient and able to deal with the three issues that I mentioned earlier.

Anna Terrón
And to add a word which is not yet on the table, I would say that we cannot compete with the Chinese with some of their tools. So what do we do? We do the best we can do. We offer what we are good at in the European Union, and what we are good at in the European Union is our public systems. What makes the difference is our public system. So, we are not going to buy some goods here or in this other country because we are never going to win this game. But we look forward to something more robust, offering what is better, what we are better at. We are trying to create a society which is viable, in which there is certain social cohesion and with respect to value. That’s what we’re working on, and that’s what makes sense to the different tensions you are mentioning and the different networks we have in Europe: private, public, and technical corporation. So that’s what we do and what we try to do.

Jerémie Pellet
I would also add that I think the relation between China and Africa and developing countries is actually changing. I mean China has invested a lot in the past, not so much since the COVID, by the way. And now some countries are facing fiscal issues and debt issues with a lot of debt held by China. So China is now in the position of trying to restructure its own debts toward the countries, which is a totally different position. And since then, the level of commitment in Africa has truly decreased.

So they are taking into account the level of debt of the country, which means that probably in the future they will be more cautious, and the partner countries themselves would probably be more cautious with investments from China or other countries that may offer some very good and cheap conditions which means that this is the right time to work with the partner countries on a more sustainable model.

This will allow them to get some long-term infrastructures, long-term public policies to be able to get through this crisis and the next one with as limited support as possible from the rest of the world.

Anna Terrón
And at the same time, we enjoy working together. We are learning from each other. PN is also a mutual learning platform especially for small countries, small organisations, and we are very happy to have built in the last 16 years to have built this sort of cooperation family within the European Union. We probably look forward to talking also to having some of the people aboard here and there and try to talk with the Chinese, with the Americans. We look forward to continuing to deepen  and enlarge our activity.

Barham Nardo
Furthering this mission and these values of the European Union is very crucial. It’s very important to create a sustainable strategy for these developing countries because ultimately, it’s in all of our interests. 

Anna Terrón
And that’s the European interest to have long-term sustainability and sustainable development in those countries and to try to build alliances.