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European statistical programme 2013-2017

2011/0459(COD)

The Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs adopted the report by Edward SCICLUNA (S&D, MT) on the proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the European statistical programme 2013-2017.

The committee recommended that the European Parliament’s position at first reading under the ordinary legislative procedure should be to amend the Commission proposal as follows:

Value-added of the programme: in Members’ opinion, statistical information must be friendly and accessible, based on uniform standards and common quality assessment criteria, in particular "relevance", "accuracy", "timeliness", "accessibility" and "coherence". It is based on the idea of a reasonable burden-sharing between the EU budget and the Member States' budgets.

Specific objectives of the programme:

  • Objective 1: this relates to providing quality statistical information as close to real-time as practicable to support the development, monitoring and evaluation of the policies of the European Union properly reflecting priorities and needs of end users in a cost-effective manner without unnecessary duplication of effort; in particular regarding social and environmental statistics, which are not yet on an equal footing with economic indicators; as well as the production and provision of more reliable statistics on public debt, including solid data on contingent liabilities;
  • Objective 2: this involves implementing new methods of production of European statistics aiming at efficiency gains and quality improvements, such as gender disaggregated data starting from the collection stage, and ensuring comparability;
  • Objective 4: this new objective seeks to ensure that delivery of statistics is kept consistent throughout the whole duration of the programme, provided that this does not interfere with the priority-setting mechanisms of the European Statistical System;
  • Objective 5: the programme should pioneer the development of reliable indicators able to meet the challenges of the 21st century, namely measuring environmental sustainability, quality of life and social cohesion. These should be promoted as a complement to classical economic indicators. Economic activity in the tertiary sector and the social economy should be recorded distinctly.

Independence: since national statistical institutes are part of the European Statistical System, each Member State shall ensure the independence and integrity of its statistical authority. Interference by Member States' governments with the independence of national statistical institutes shall be effectively deterred through appropriate measures.

In the interests of transparency, the Commission (Eurostat) shall disclose publicly its opinion on the quality of national statistics, highlighting and making public any recurrent under-performance of national statistical institutes in as timely a manner as possible.

Transparency: Members call for the following:

  • that each Member State shall ensure that its statistical production is established in a standardised manner and is enhanced by internal and external audit mechanisms;
  • that the Commission (Eurostat) shall consider how to make its publications, particularly those via its website, more user-friendly to non-professionals and shall allow easy access to complete long-term data series.

Role of Eurostat (funding): an amendment stipulates that the Commission shall ensure an appropriate level of technical support for those national statistical institutes which are unable to produce statistics of the required quality due to temporary unavoidable circumstances.

The financial allocation for the Programme may also cover expenses pertaining to any assistance and expertise given to Member States to help them meet research constraints and major methodological obstacles.

Evaluation and review: no later than 31 December 2016, the Commission may, if appropriate, after consulting the European Statistical System Committee, submit to the European Parliament and to the Council a proposal for the extension of the programme for 2018 to 2020, while respecting the Regulation laying down the multiannual financial framework 2014 to 2020.