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The European Statistical System
The European Statistical System (ESS) is the partnership between the Community statistical authority, which is the Commission (Eurostat), and the national statistical institutes (NSIs) and other national authorities responsible in each Member State for the development, production and dissemination of European statistics.
National statistical institutes and other national authorities
1. The national statistical authority designated by each Member State as the body having the responsibility for coordinating all activities at national level for the development, production and dissemination of European statistics (the NSI) shall act as the contact point for the Commission (Eurostat) on statistical matters. The Member States shall take the necessary measures to ensure the application of this provision. 2. The Commission (Eurostat) shall maintain and publish on its website a list of NSIs and other national authorities responsible for the development, production and dissemination of European statistics as designated by Member States. 3. The NSIs and the other national authorities included in the list referred to in paragraph 2 of this Article may receive grants without a call for proposals, in accordance with Article 168(1)(d) of Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 2342/2002.
Commission (Eurostat)
1. The Community statistical authority, as designated by the Commission to develop, produce and disseminate European statistics, shall be referred to as ‘the Commission (Eurostat)’ in this Regulation. 2. At Community level, the Commission (Eurostat) shall ensure the production of European statistics according to established rules and statistical principles. In this respect, it shall have the sole responsibility for deciding on processes, statistical methods, standards and procedures, and on the content and timing of statistical releases. 3. Without prejudice to Article 5 of the Protocol on the Statute of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) and the European Central Bank, the Commission (Eurostat) shall coordinate the statistical activities of the institutions and bodies of the Community, in particular with a view to ensuring consistency and quality of the data and minimising reporting burden. To that end, the Commission (Eurostat) may invite any institution or body of the Community to consult or cooperate with it for the purpose of developing methods and systems for statistical purposes in their respective field of competence. Any of those institutions or bodies which propose to produce statistics shall consult the Commission (Eurostat) and take into account any recommendation that it may make to this effect.
European Statistical System Committee
1. The European Statistical System Committee (ESS Committee) is hereby established. It shall provide professional guidance to the ESS for developing, producing and disseminating European statistics in line with the statistical principles set out in Article 2(1). 2. The ESS Committee shall be composed of the representatives of the NSIs who are national specialists for statistics. It shall be chaired by the Commission (Eurostat). 3. The ESS Committee shall adopt its rules of procedure, which shall reflect its tasks. 4. The ESS Committee shall be consulted by the Commission in regard to: (a) the measures which the Commission intends to take for the development, production and dissemination of European statistics, their justification on a cost-effectiveness basis, the means and timetables for achieving them, the response burden on survey respondents; (b) proposed developments and priorities in the European statistical programme; (c) initiatives to bring into practice the reprioritisation and reduction of the response burden; (d) issues concerning statistical confidentiality; (e) the further development of the Code of Practice; and (f) any other question, in particular issues of methodology, arising from the establishment or implementation of statistical programmes that are raised by its Chair, either on its own initiative or at the request of a Member State.
Cooperation with other bodies
The European Statistical Advisory Committee and the European Statistical Governance Advisory Board shall be consulted in accordance with their respective competence.
Cooperation with the ESCB
To minimise the reporting burden and guarantee the coherence necessary to produce European statistics, the ESS and the ESCB shall cooperate closely, while complying with the statistical principles as set out in Article 2(1).
International cooperation
Without prejudice to the position and the role of individual Member States, the position of the ESS as regards issues of particular relevance to European statistics at international level as well as the specific arrangements for representation in the international statistical bodies shall be prepared by the ESS Committee and coordinated by the Commission (Eurostat).
European statistics Code of Practice
1. The Code of Practice shall aim at ensuring public trust in European statistics by establishing how European statistics are to be developed, produced and disseminated in conformity with the statistical principles as set out in Article 2(1) and best international statistical practice. 2. The Code of Practice shall be reviewed and updated as necessary by the ESS Committee. The Commission shall publish amendments thereto.
Statistical quality
1. To guarantee the quality of results, European statistics shall be developed, produced and disseminated on the basis of uniform standards and of harmonised methods. In this respect, the following quality criteria shall apply: (a) ‘relevance’, which refers to the degree to which statistics meet current and potential needs of the users; (b) ‘accuracy’, which refers to the closeness of estimates to the unknown true values; (c) ‘timeliness’, which refers to the period between the availability of the information and the event or phenomenon it describes; (d) ‘punctuality’, which refers to the delay between the date of the release of the data and the target date (the date by which the data should have been delivered); (e) ‘accessibility’ and ‘clarity’, which refer to the conditions and modalities by which users can obtain, use and interpret data; (f) ‘comparability’, which refers to the measurement of the impact of differences in applied statistical concepts, measurement tools and procedures where statistics are compared between geographical areas, sectoral domains or over time; (g) ‘coherence’, which refers to the adequacy of the data to be reliably combined in different ways and for various uses. 2. In applying the quality criteria laid down in paragraph 1 of this Article to the data covered by sectoral legislation in specific statistical domains, the modalities, structure and periodicity of quality reports provided for in sectoral legislation shall be defined by the Commission in accordance with the regulatory procedure referred to in Article 27(2). Specific quality requirements, such as target values and minimum standards for the statistical production, may be laid down in sectoral legislation. Where sectoral legislation does not so provide, measures may be adopted by the Commission. Those measures, designed to amend non-essential elements of this Regulation by supplementing it, shall be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny referred to in Article 27(3). 3. Member States shall provide the Commission (Eurostat) with reports on the quality of the data transmitted. The Commission (Eurostat) shall assess the quality of data transmitted and shall prepare and publish reports on the quality of European statistics.
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