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

The Commission accepts all amendments of the European Parliament. The amendments were mainly of a technical nature. More specifically, these amendments relate in particular to: - the deletion of the detailed definition of the environmental domain "Other environmental protection activities"; - making the characteristics on geographical breakdown into mandatory characteristics. These characteristics are vital for measuring the development of the single market and the international presence of credit institutions; - adding to the list of characteristics on employment (regarding women) as they are important for measuring gender-related patterns in employment; - making the addition of information on pension schemes and other debt securities and other fixed income securities mandatory. This information is necessary for monitoring the investment behaviour of pension funds and to allow the comparison of the structure of pension funds with regard to pension schemes; - adding the characteristics "Number of enterprises with members in other EEA countries" and "Geographical breakdown of number of members by gender". All these modifications stress that one of the main objectives of the proposal is to collect data that can be used for monitoring the internal market of pension funds (which is expected to open up in the short and medium term); - limiting the breakdown by industrial activity of the environmental variables to the NACE Rev.1 2 digit level. The more detailed breakdown could possibly result in additional costs for some Member States which are not outweighed by the benefits in the form of availability of more detailed information; - reducing the level of regional breakdown to the NUTS 1 level. This information could possibly result in additional costs for the reporting authorities of some Member States as well as the enterprises, which are not outweighed by the benefits of the more detailed information; - allowing a possible extension of the transitional period for the transmission of these characteristics with a maximum of three years in accordance with the Comitology procedure. �