The formation of codimension-one interfaces for multi-well gradient-driven problems is well-known and established in the scalar case, where the equation is often referred to as the Allen-Cahn equation. The proofs rely for a large part on a monotonicity formula for the energy density, which is itself related to the vanishing of the so-called discrepancy function. The vectorial case in contrast is quite open. This lack of results and insight is to a large extent related to the absence of known appropriate monotonicity formula. In this paper, we focus on the elliptic case in two dimensions, and introduce methods, relying on the analysis of the partial differential equation, which allow to circumvent the lack of monotonicity formula for the energy density. In the last part of the paper, we recover a new monotonicity formula which relies on a new discrepancy relation. These tools allow to extend to the vectorial case in two dimensions most of the results obtained for the scalar case. We emphasize also some specific features of the vectorial case.