Structural business statistics: additional sectors, credit institutions and pension funds

This document outlines the opinion of the European Central Bank concerning structural business. On 27 February 2001, the European Central Bank (ECB) received a request from the Council of the European Union for an ECB opinion on a draft regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation 58/97/EC, Euratom concerning structural business statistics. The objective of the draft Regulation is to complement the existing regulation concerning structural business statistics with two additional sector-specific annexes on credit institutions and pension funds, in Annex 1, a common module for annual structural statistics, to extend the coverage of the horizontal module to activities related to financial intermediation services, pension funds and financial auxiliaries. Finally, it introduces two additional variables in the area of environment to Annex 2 on a detailed module for structural statistics in industry. The ECB welcomes the adoption of the draft Regulation as an important step towards the provision of high quality statistics on financial services. Furthermore, the ECB notes that the revision of the Council Regulation will in due course be followed by proposals for four Commission Regulations on the implementation of the regulation. The ECB expects to be consulted on these aspects.�