The private sector is crucial in accelerating the economies of enlargement countries and supporting their integration into the European Union. By combining market insights and dialogue with the private sector, DG ENEST aims to effectively utilise EU policy engagement and financing tools to support investments in candidate or potential candidate countries as they work towards the EU membership.
Global Gateway in the EU’s Neighbourhood and Enlargement regions
Global Gateway is the EU’s contribution to narrowing the global investment gap worldwide by mobilising up to €300 billion of investments for sustainable and high-quality projects in the digital, climate, energy, health, transport and education sectors, taking into account the needs of partner countries and ensuring lasting benefits for local communities.
Delivered in a Team Europe approach, the private sector is a key stakeholder to implement Global Gateway along EU and EU Member States institutions, partner countries, development finance institutions, amongst others. The private sector has a fundamental role to play in bringing in investments, knowledge and developing skills in partner countries.
Since 2019, the following has been achieved in the 14 Enlargement and Eastern Neighbourhood countries:
- In the Western Balkans region, by January 2025, the expected investment mobilisation reached €17.1 billion.
- In the Eastern Partnership region, by January 2025, the expected investment mobilisation reached EUR 14.6 billion.
- In Türkiye, by January 2025, the expected investment mobilisation reached EUR 1.9 billion.
Together, we are delivering on major developments in transport, energy and digital infrastructure, as well as investing in education, health and research, connecting the region itself and the region with the EU, as well as supporting socio-economic development.
Find out more about Global Gateway in general here.
Business forums
Business forums encourage active dialogue between public and private stakeholders, both from local and European backgrounds. They are organised in collaboration with partner countries, the private sector, and the European Commission. Activities at these forums include sector-specific panel discussions, business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-government (B2G) meetings, exhibition booths, and field visits.
We encourage you to participate in these opportunities:
Calls for Expressions of Interest
The European Commission wants to support investment and development plans of EU companies and local companies in enlargement and eastern neighbourhood countries’ markets. To ease the contact of companies to our services, we regularly open calls for expressions of interest targeting specific markets.
To engage with us and for further information, please see below past and current calls:
Transparency
Transparency and accountability are essential for maintaining the trust of Union citizens in the legitimacy of the political, legislative and administrative processes of the Union. To facilitate Transparency and align with best practices, all companies getting in contact with our services must be registered in the European Union Transparency Register.
How to register: Guidance - European Union Transparency Register
Market access
The EU provides online resources and support to assist businesses in global operations, such as:
- Access2Markets Welcome home page, which allows you to obtain information you need when you trade with third countries, such as on tariffs, taxes, procedures, formalities and requirements, rules of origin, export measures, statistics, trade barriers and much more. It also allows you to access key information needed for trade in services as well as for investment and procurement in 3rd countries.
- EU Trade agreements, which gives you a catalogue of the current trade agreements facilitating trade with third countries.
- YourEurope guides you to the most relevant EU and national websites to find out more about the rules on conducting business in the EU.
Support for companies
Whether you are a Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) in the EU looking to export and invest beyond the EU, or an SME from our partner country, you can find a collection of specific tools that can help you:
- Support for the internationalisation of EU SMEs.
- Overview of financing instruments available for SMEs in the Western Balkans region
- EU4Business provides an overview of EU supported projects and opportunities for the SMEs in the Eastern Partnership region
- The EU4Digital Initiative is the EU’s flagship regional programme to support digital transformation and the harmonisation of digital markets in countries included in the Eastern Partnership (EaP) joint policy initiative.
- EU4Innovation supports the Government of Albania in achieving key objectives in the field of economic development, namely, to accelerate the transformation into a more innovation-driven and knowledge-based economy, unlocking its human capital, entrepreneurial as well as research potential and thereby increasing its competitiveness.
- EU4environment helps the Eastern Partnership countries preserve their natural capital and increase people’s environmental well-being, by supporting environment-related action, demonstrating and unlocking opportunities for greener growth, and setting mechanisms to better manage environmental risks and impacts.
- The European Fund for Sustainable Development Plus (EFSD+) is one of the financing tools of Global Gateway, promoting sustainable investments in the European Union’s (EU) partner countries.