European statistical programme 2013-2017

The Commission presents a report on the implementation of the European Statistical Programme 2013-2017.

The scope of the report is limited to the execution of the European statistical programme in 2013 and 2014. It is structured in five chapters, corresponding to the five criteria to be evaluated – these being effectiveness, relevance, efficiency, European added value and coherence - plus one containing a few high level recommendations.

Effectiveness: since effectiveness is the most relevant criterion for this kind of report, the chapter includes a summary, followed by information on the results achieved so far, corresponding to the structure of the programme, (the three priority areas and sub-areas and their 23 detailed objectives).

The Commission is considered to be ‘well on track’ to achieving an objective when 75% or more of its indicators are being met. On this basis, the report notes that 17 of the 23 detailed objectives are currently well on track for completion, with only limited difficulties being experienced in relation to the other six, these being (i) economic governance; (ii) people’s Europe; (iii) geospatial, environmental, agricultural and other sectoral statistics; (iv) priority setting and simplification and (v) partnership within the European Statistical System and beyond.

The report also notes that good progress has also been made on the projects related to modernisation. The projects involving collaboration between the members of the European Statistical System showed good results, with the European Statistical System collaboration networks and the European Statistical System vision implementation projects making especially good progress.

At the start of 2015, the European Statistical System Committee agreed to implement the European Statistical System Vision 2020, initially through eight European Statistical System vision implementation projects. Further development of the modernisation projects will depend on the continuous availability of resources for the European Statistical System.

Relevance: the European statistical programme continues to be relevant, as its objectives still correspond to the needs of the EU, and it meets the needs of a number of different categories of users, as shown by several indicators: the increase in the number of website users; the number of times that data published by Eurostat was accessed online and the number of publications downloaded; the steady rise in the frequency of mentions of Eurostat on the internet; the high level of user satisfaction.

The number of parliamentary questions on Eurostat’s statistics remained at a continual high level, with a particularly large number of questions being asked on statistics relating to the financial crisis.

Efficiency: Eurostat has made efficient use of its resources, both financial and human.

Budget execution in 2013 and 2014 exceeded the targets set in the management plans and the level of participation in projects supported by EU grants was good.

EU added value: the programme supports a continual improvement in the quality of statistics used for the Europe 2020 scoreboard, the development and evaluation flagship initiatives and the EU monitoring of national policies (specifically through the Stability and Growth Pact, the Macroeconomic Imbalances Procedure and the European Semester).

The programme is the main channel through which the EU provides financial support to national statistical authorities, for the production of statistics, the development of new statistics and the implementation of new methodologies, classifications and standards.

Coherence: in 2013 and 2014, the European statistical programme was well coordinated with other EU initiatives in the same field, both other Eurostat programmes, such as the programme for the modernisation of European enterprise and trade statistics, and statistics produced by other Commission Directorate-Generals.

The report contains the following recommendations:

• give particular attention to those objectives where problems have been encountered;
• secure sufficient resources to maintain the necessary level of investment for the modernisation of the production of European statistics ;
• identify and implement projects at EU level which can maximise EU added value (e.g. the EuroGroups register, the Single Market Statistics (SIMSTAT) project, and the work carried out in implementing the European Statistical System Vision 2020.