Community statistics after the accession of new Member States to the Union: income and living conditions EU-SILC (amend. Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003)

PURPOSE: Amendment of Regulation 1177/2003/EC concerning Community statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC).

PROPOSED ACT: Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council.

CONTENT: On 16 June 2003, the European Parliament and the Council adopted Regulation 1177/2003/EC concerning Community Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). Under this Regulation, the EU-SILC project will be launched in 2004 or in 2005 in all EU Member States, in Iceland and Norway. The aim of the Regulation is to establish a common framework for the systematic production of Community statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC). EU-SILC is to become the reference source of comparative statistics on income.

Because the new SILC project is a source for key socio-economic indicators and is to be used by the Council and the Commission in the fight against poverty and social exclusion in the EU, it must meet high statistical quality standards, mainly a high response rate, a low error rate and full geographical coverage.

The SILC project is also to be launched in the ten new Member States. However, it appears that all these new Member States, with the exception of Estonia, need more time to adapt their systems to the harmonised methods and definitions used to compile Community statistics. The sample sizes for these countries also need to be defined.

The proposed Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation 1177/2003/EC introduces a derogation in Article 4 to allow all the new Member States except Estonia to launch the SILC project in 2005.

It specifies in Article 13 that the EU financial contribution for Estonia will not be for the first four years of data collection but for four years from 2005.

Lastly, it defines in its Annex the minimum effective sample size for each of the ten new Member States.

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS: The proposed Regulation has a financial implication for the Commission. The EU contribution for the first four years of data collection of the SILC information in the old EU Member States, in Iceland and Norway amounted to EUR 38 650 000. It amounts to EUR 9 556 000 for the new Member States.