Working Better Together in a Team Europe Approach

The IATI standard provides a more flexible way of reporting than the CRS, richer information (e.g. on contracts, interventions and results if these are provided by the publisher) and a higher frequency in reporting. Moreover, it provides a more user-friendly tool (d-portal) to search data in the database, which enables users to find data on TEIs autonomously. Drawbacks of the IATI standard are that the data is not fact-checked centrally and that about half of the EU Member States are not reporting to IATI yet¹⁵¹. While CRS reporting is managed centrally by each EU Member State, IATI reporting is managed at the level of each publishing organisation, i.e. a relevant ministry, implementing agency, EU DFI or NGO. This means that for a given Member State, the reporting may not be exhaustive.

Upon the Commission’s proposal, the IATI Secretariat has established a tag vocabulary for TEIs in IATI in March 2023, which enables publishers to tag their contributions to TEIs as such in their IATI reporting. The same TEI keyword(s) is (are) to be used here as in CRS reporting, and the types of data listed above for the CRS are also available in the IATI database. For a detailed explanation on publishing IATI data for TEIs, see Annex.

Increasing the number of reporting Member States and publishing organisations will be essential for using IATI for the purpose of TEI reporting in a broader manner. The plan of the IATI Secretariat to introduce a simplified reporting based on an Excel sheet may facilitate this process. Financial TEI reporting could be a good opportunity for more Member States and organisations to start reporting to IATI. The Commission can provide technical support (coaching, mutual learning) to assist Member States and their organisations wishing to do so. The aim is to increase the rate of actors following a TE approach actors reporting to IATI to a robust level.

IATI can complement the CRS for financial reporting on TEIs, in particular to have more up-to-date and more detailed information on relevant contributions.

151 For publishing in IATI, it is not required to be a member of IATI