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International Partnerships

How monitoring works

The European Commission is constantly and actively engaged in improving the quality of reporting, and facilitating the design and monitoring of its interventions.

To this end, the Commission has developed a list of pre-defined core indicators that can be used by all staff and partners in their monitoring activities. These indicators are aligned with the policy priorities of Commission services working in external relations. They draw on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). They consist of two types

Additionally, the Directorate-General for International Partnerships (DG INTPA) has designed guidance on results and indicators for development. It comprises ready-to-use results chains for a variety of sectors accompanied by a list of relevant indicators. The results chains present the logical flow (and possible pathways of change) of how EU-funded interventions are intended to contribute to impact in different sectors.   

In 2021, DG INTPA, the Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations and the Service for Foreign Policy Instruments introduced the ‘OPSYS’ IT platform to facilitate the monitoring of its EU-funded interventions and the data collection for results reporting, with the help of their implementing partners.

The objective of this tool is to bring in more efficient, transparent and results-oriented planning, management and follow-up of EU external actions. The use of OPSYS represents a game changer for corporate monitoring and reporting of results. 

Related links

OPSYS on the Exact External Wiki

Courses related to OPSYS on INTPA Academy - the public learning platform for development

OPSYS forum on Capacity4Dev - the knowledge sharing platform for development

Full list of core indicators available in OPSYS on Capacity4Dev

Global European Results Framework (GERF)

Gender Action Plan (GAP) III (PDF)