Compendium of Good Practices on Partnership

Partnership principle. Cultures of partnership

Together with multi-level governance, partnership has been at the core of European Cohesion Policy funds for a long time. Partnership is about establishing and maintaining effective collaboration between public authorities, economic and social partners, and civil society organisations at various levels in the programming phase and throughout the programme implementation cycle.

The legal and procedural basis for partnership has been strengthened since 2014, especially through the adoption of the European Code of Conduct on Partnership, which sets out the framework within which the Member States implement partnership, in accordance with their institutional set-up and competences, both at national and regional levels.

A comparative look at the implementation of programmes from 2014-2020 to 2021-2027 shows that good practices exist and have improved in many programmes. In some cases, these practices are informed by and linked to an established and mature culture of partnership and collaboration, which exists in some countries and regions of the EU. But implementation also points at shortcomings and discrepancies between Member States. In these situations, a sustainable and profound change in how partnership is implemented will take time.

The compendium: a collective effort

Since the inception of the European Community of Practice on Partnership (ECoPP) in 2022, the practitioners of partnership at all levels of funds’ implementation have had a strong focus on learning, and knowledge exchange. Examples of good practices from across Europe have been put together and discussed as part of sub-groups’ work in 2023. Following the third plenary meeting of ECoPP, the members agreed that good practices should be put together to reflect the diversity of approaches to partnership and to inform and inspire future work.

While a “golden standard” for good and effective partnership seems difficult to achieve, the compendium can serve as a constellation of good ingredients to guide practice in Member States and regions and to encourage them to come up with their own impactful collaborations and tools.

The proposed examples in the compendium are clustered under “types” of practices which have been identified from different sources: input from the ECoPP members and the sub-groups, geographical desks in the Directorates-General of REGIO, EMPL, MARE, HOME and AGRI, examples from studies and analyses, or from other collaborators.

Focus on quality and good ingredients

In each selected example for the compendium we looked for a quality element that makes a certain example stand out, for instance, a combination of tools used in consultations, frequency, a particular structure for a type of activity, and out-of-the-box thinking.

Overall, the six clusters can be looked at as good ingredients that one would need to use to improve the quality of partnerships in cohesion policy and shared management programmes. Partnerships can be set up and function without most or all of these, but then their impact is limited, and their value does not go beyond a formal, purely bureaucratic exercise.

This compendium is not intended as an exhaustive document and future updates are foreseen with examples that can be added at any stage.

Clusters overview:

To see examples of good practice on partnership, go to the Compendium.