Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the implementation of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the labour cost index (LCI)

Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 February 2003 concerning the labour cost index establishes a common framework for the production and provision to the Commission of comparable labour cost indices by Member States. The Commission (Eurostat) publishes a quarterly news release on the hourly labour cost index on its website. It contains a complete data set, broken down by economic activity and by the components of labour costs. It also includes both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth rates.

Pursuant to Article 13 of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003, the Commission must submit a report to the European Parliament and the Council every two years. The report should, in particular, examine the quality of the labour cost index data. The present report relates to the labour cost index data provided to the Commission for the reference quarters from 2012Q3 to 2014Q2 (inclusive). The quality of the labour cost index is defined in terms of the following criteria: relevance, accuracy, punctuality of delivery of data, accessibility and clarity, comparability, consistency and completeness.

As was the case in the last reporting period, the level of accuracy, accessibility and clarity remains satisfactory. This report will therefore focus on improvements made in relation to relevance and coverage, and will address the issues of the consistency of the data with national accounts data and the comparability of working-day adjusted data. Particular attention is given to the problem of data not being provided by Member States within the deadlines set, and the consequences of this for the quality of the published European aggregates.

EUR-Lex: COM(2015)42: Follow the progress of this report through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2015:042:FIN

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