91999E0697

WRITTEN QUESTION E-0697/99

by José García-Margallo y Marfil (PPE) to the Commission

(26 March 1999)

Subject: Structural Funds

The regions whose level of income per inhabitant is less than 75 % of that which corresponds to the average Community inhabitant are classed as "Objective 1 regions" and are entitled to substantial Community aid.

In order to work out whether this threshold has been crossed or not, the draft Council Regulation, COM(98) 0131 final(1), laying down general provisions on the Structural Funds, stipulates that the figures corresponding to the last three years on which Eurostat has information will be taken into account.

The Director-General of the Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat) disclosed at the meeting of Parliament's Subcommittee on Monetary Affairs of 17 February 1999 that the statistical data corresponding to the financial years 1994, 1995 and 1996 already included the data corresponding to the hidden economy of the regions analysed, although he did not say exactly what criteria had been followed in order to estimate or assess this type of activity.

What criteria is the Commission following in order to estimate the "hidden economy" of the various European regions?

Answer given by Mr de Silguy on behalf of the Commission

(6 May 1999)

As already explained in the answer given to the Written Question P-1784/97 by Mr Pomés Ruiz(2), the underground economy is indeed very difficult to measure and to control. In order to address the issue of the measurement and coverage of "underground" activity in the statistical data, the Member States make many explicit and implicit corrections to their calculations of gross national product (GNP), the precise nature of which varies from one Member State to another.

Eurostat does not directly measure the extent of the underground economy in the Member States. However, the Commission has asked the Member States to supplement the coverage of the underground economy by carrying out a number of procedures to verify and to improve estimates of GNP and gross domestic product (GDP). A description of this work can be found in a report to the Council and the Parliament(3) which describes the responses made to the requirements of the GNP Directive 89/130/EEC, Euratom of 13 February 1989 on the harmonization of the compilation of gross national product at market prices(4), and in particular to Article 7, which calls for special attention to be given to the verification and improvement of the exhaustiveness of the estimates of GDP and GNP, and to the coverage of the underground economy.

The very latest available national GDP figures based on all these efforts have been used in the recently published estimations of regional GDP per capita for the years 1994 to 1996. The national GDP figures have been split between the regions according to the share of their gross value added in the national gross value added figure, as supplied by the national statistical services.

(1) OJ C 176, 9.6.1998, p. 1.

(2) OJ C 45, 10.2.1998.

(3) COM(96) 124 final.

(4) OJ L 49, 21.2.1989.