The AidWatch Report 2011, released May 19 highlights the importance of aid transparency and the striking variation amongst EU Member States’ progress towards aid transparency. There are good performers among emerging and traditional donors, and among large and small member states, which suggests that all aid agencies should be able to deliver on their aid transparency commitments:

“For example, Estonia – one of the smallest and newest aid donors – is the fourth best performer, slightly behind Sweden, Denmark and the United Kingdom. At the other end of the scale, the EU’s second largest aid donor, France, is competing with Hungary, Greece and Poland in terms of poor performance.” p.22 AidWatch Report 2011: Challenging Self Interest

Publish What You Fund worked with European NGOs to develop and test a new approach for assessing donors’ aid transparency.

Report Recommendations

AidWatch members called on donors to deliver on their aid transparency commitments, specifically by using the IATI standard:

“The survey results demonstrate that all countries should be able to deliver on their aid transparency commitments. We call on the EC and EU member states to ensure that aid transparency delivers on emerging international best practice by:

–        Disclosing comprehensive information for all their activities, in machine readable formats.

–        To do so by using the common standard that ensures comparability both with other donors, but particularly also the needs of recipient governments.

–        By signing and submitting remaining implementation schedules and delivering on initial phases of IATI by HLF4.

–        The EC and EU member states must demonstrate their commitment and leadership to improved aid transparency by ensuring that it remains firmly embedded in a common European consensus on aid effectiveness in the lead up to HLF4.” p.23 AidWatch Report 2011: Challenging Self Interest

You can download the report here:

http://aidwatch.concordeurope.org/static/files/assets/7bdf51c9/CONCORD_2011.pdf

The full results are also available here:

https://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/files/AidWatch-Aid-Transparency-results-PUBLIC.xlsx

And the full methodology can be downloaded here:

https://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/files/Aid-Transparency-Tracker-Methdology-FULL.docx