The Team Europe Democracy (TED) Initiative is a global thematic Team Europe Initiative (TEI), launched in December 2021 by EU Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen to promote democracy and human rights worldwide. The initiative includes 14 EU Member States, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Poland, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden, and the most important implementing partners of the EU and EU member states, from now on also ECES. The network is therefore composed by civil society organizations or networks, think tanks, research centers, and universities based in Europe and engaged in promoting democracy and human rights worldwide.
The specific objective is to create a coordinated strategic European response in support of democracy that is effectively steered worldwide by the TED Secretariat, which is composed by staff members the German and Belgian Development Cooperation Agencies (GIZ and ENABEL), in close cooperation with the TED Coordinator of the Directorate General for International Partnership of the European Commission.
The TED Network has been created to facilitate exchanging information and engaging in frequent strategic dialogue. It enhances cross-regional collaboration on democracy support and will support joint initiatives on the TED thematic priorities which are:
1) Accountability and Rule of Law;
2) Political and Civic Participation;
3) Media and Digital.
ECES will contribute by actively participating and sharing our comparative experiences within the groups dedicated to “Political and Civic Participation” and “Media and Digital”. We are very grateful to the EU, GIZ and ENABEL for the trust in ECES that confirms the good work we are doing in facilitating the electoral cooperation between the EU, EU member states and their partner countries requesting democracy and electoral support. This is the main rationale and reason for which we have created ECES and our main goal since 2010. We will therefore spare no efforts to provide our best contribution.
