Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EU) No 99/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the European statistical programme 2013-17, by extending it to 2018-2020

The European Union is faced with challenges in many policy areas and demand for European statistics is consistently high. The implementation and monitoring of EU policies relies on comparable and high-quality statistical information about the economic, social and environmental situation in the EU and its components at national and regional level. European statistics are also indispensable if ‘Europe’ is to be understood by the general public and citizens are to take part in the democratic process and debate the present and future of the EU.

In order to satisfy the information needs stemming from the Commission’s 10 political priorities, a number of urgent statistical gaps need to be addressed. Furthermore, the timeliness of some European statistics needs to be improved urgently, so that they provide the more up-to-date information needed in the context of the European Semester exercise.

Although national statistical systems have made a significant effort to modernise their production methods with the support of the 2013-2017 European statistical programme (ESP), the current statistical production infrastructure is still not flexible enough to deliver new statistics when needed, while also limiting the associated cost and administrative burden. Under the status quo, the European Statistical System (ESS) will not be in a position to satisfy the growing demand for statistics or the need to make them available more quickly, thus putting the relevance of European statistics at risk.

Against this background, the objective of the proposal is to extend the ESP for the 2018-2020 period and provide the financial support that the ESS needs in order to be able to:
– provide high-quality statistical information and close the statistical gaps that need to be addressed most urgently, focusing on a number of priority areas that reflect the Commission’s 10 political priorities;
– build the permanent capacity needed to respond more quickly to emerging needs and to adapt the statistical infrastructure so as to harness the potential of new data sources; and
– strengthen partnership within the ESS and beyond in order to further increase its productivity and secure its leading role in official statistics worldwide.

• Primary Source

EUR-Lex: COM(2016)557: Follow the progress of this proposal through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2016:557:FIN

EUR-Lex: SWD(2016)287: Executive summary of the impact assessment http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2016:287:FIN

EUR-Lex: SWD(2016)288: Impact assessment http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2016:288:FIN

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