Working Better Together in a Team Europe Approach

Tracking financial contributions to TEIs showcases their impact on development cooperation, thus increasing accountability and providing visibility to the work of the EU and its Member States. Following an inclusive process, the Commission has provided a guidance note (see Annex 4.4) for the joint financial tracking system.

This system tracks the disbursement of financial contributions (ODA and non-ODA) to TEIs. It uses three reporting standards in parallel and in a complementary fashion:

• the OECD-DAC’s Creditor Reporting System (CRS);
• the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) standard;
• Total Official Support for Sustainable Development (TOSSD).

All three reporting standards include a relevant keyword (or tag) field that can be filled into flag activities as contributions to TEIs. All TE actors need to operationalise this through a TEI keyword/tag in their internal reporting systems (see Annex 4.4). Disbursements which cannot be tracked this way can exceptionally be communicated to the Commission manually if this is seen as necessary. The Commission intends to prepare, on an annual basis starting from 2024, aggregate Team Europe approach reporting on disbursements to TEIs based on the data reported by actors following a Team Europe approach.

This system is not expected to provide a centralised financial report for each TEI individually and only disbursements from 2021 onwards will be captured. It is therefore of interest to Team Europe approach groups to continue updating their TEI mappings (see above) for external communication purposes. It is understood that the overall amounts from the mapping (focused on ongoing commitments in 2021-2027) will differ from the disbursed amounts tracked by the financial reporting system. This difference can be explained to outside stakeholders by highlighting the different methodologies used.

⇒ See Annex 4.4 for more detailed guidance on how to track the disbursement of financial contributions to TEIs.