(1)

Council Regulation (Euratom, EEC) No 1588/90 of 11 June 1990 on the transmission of data subject to statistical confidentiality to the Statistical Office of the European Communities (2) has been substantially amended several times (3). In the interests of clarity and rationality the said Regulation should be codified.

(2)

To enable it to carry out the duties entrusted to it by the Treaties, the Commission must have full and reliable information. With a view to efficient management, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, hereinafter referred to as ‘Eurostat’, should be able to obtain all the national statistical information necessary in order to prepare Community statistics and carry out the necessary analyses.

(3)

Article 10 of the EC Treaty and Article 192 of the Euratom Treaty require Member States to facilitate the achievement of the Community's tasks. This obligation extends to providing all the requisite information. Moreover, the absence of confidential statistical data constitutes for Eurostat a considerable loss of information at Community level and makes it difficult to prepare statistics and carry out analyses on the Community.

(4)

Member States have no further cause to invoke provisions on statistical confidentiality, since it is established that Eurostat offers the same data confidentiality guarantees as the national statistical institutes. These guarantees are already to some extent enshrined in the Community Treaties, notably in Article 287 of the EC Treaty, Article 194(1) of the Euratom Treaty, and Article 17 of Regulation (EEC, Euratom, ECSC) No 259/68 of the Council of 29 February 1968 laying down the Staff Regulations of Officials of the European Communities and the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants of the European Communities (4), and can be backed up by appropriate measures under this Regulation.

(5)

Any violation of statistical confidentiality protected by this Regulation should be dealt with effectively, whoever the offender may be.

(6)

Any infringement of the rules binding officials and other servants working for Eurostat, whether committed wilfully or through negligence, renders them liable to disciplinary sanctions and, if appropriate, legal penalties for violation of professional secrecy, pursuant to the combined provisions of Articles 12 and 18 of the Protocol on the Privileges and Immunities of the European Communities.

(7)

This Regulation applies only to the transmission to Eurostat of statistical data which, in the national statistical institutes' field of competence, are covered by statistical confidentiality, and does not affect special national or Community provisions relating to the transmission of other types of information to the Commission.

(8)

This Regulation is to be adopted without prejudice to Article 296(1)(a) of the EC Treaty, under which no Member State is required to supply information the disclosure of which it considers contrary to the essential interests of its security.

(9)

Implementation of the provisions contained in this Regulation, and in particular those designed to ensure the protection of confidential statistical data transmitted to Eurostat, will require human, technical and financial resources.

(10)

The measures necessary for the implementation of this Regulation shall be adopted in accordance with Council Decision 1999/468/EC of 28 June 1999 laying down the procedures for the exercise of implementing powers conferred on the Commission (5),

(a)

confidential statistical data: data defined in Article 13 of Council Regulation (EC) No 322/97 of 17 February 1997 on Community statistics (6);

(b)

national authorities: national statistical institutes and other national bodies responsible for the collection and use of statistics for the Communities;

(c)

information on the private lives of natural persons: information on the private and family lives of natural persons as defined by national legislation or practices in the various Member States;

(d)

use for statistical purposes: use exclusively for the compilation of statistical tables or for statistical economic analyses; may not be used for administrative, legal or tax purposes or for verification against the units surveyed;

(e)

statistical unit: basic unit covered by statistical data transmitted to Eurostat;

(f)

direct identification: identification of a statistical unit from its name or address, or from an officially allocated and published identification number;

(g)

indirect identification: possibility of deducing the identity of a statistical unit other than from the information mentioned in point (f);

(h)

officials of Eurostat: officials of the Communities, within the meaning of Article 1 of the Staff Regulations of Officials of the European Communities, working at Eurostat;

(i)

other staff of Eurostat: servants of the Communities, within the meaning of Articles 2 to 5 of the Conditions of Employment of Other Servants of the European Communities, working at Eurostat;

(j)

dissemination: supply of data in any form whatever: publications, access to databases, microfiches, telephone communications, etc.