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Document 52012DC0699
REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on the implementation of Decision No 1297/2008/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2008 on a Programme for the Modernisation of European Enterprise and Trade Statistics (MEETS)
REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on the implementation of Decision No 1297/2008/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2008 on a Programme for the Modernisation of European Enterprise and Trade Statistics (MEETS)
REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on the implementation of Decision No 1297/2008/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2008 on a Programme for the Modernisation of European Enterprise and Trade Statistics (MEETS)
/* COM/2012/0699 final */
REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on the implementation of Decision No 1297/2008/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2008 on a Programme for the Modernisation of European Enterprise and Trade Statistics (MEETS) /* COM/2012/0699 final */
REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE
EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on the
implementation of Decision No 1297/2008/EC of the European Parliament and of
the Council of 16 December 2008 on a Programme for the Modernisation of
European Enterprise and Trade Statistics (MEETS) 1. INTRODUCTION Under the terms
of Article 6 of Decision No 1297/2008/EC of the European Parliament and of the
Council of 16 December 2008 on a Programme for the Modernisation of European
Enterprise and Trade Statistics (MEETS), (hereinafter referred to as the MEETS
Decision), the Commission shall “by 31 December 2010, and thereafter on an
annual basis until 2013, … submit to the European Parliament and the Council a
report on the implementation of the MEETS Programme”. The emphasis in
the first report was on the actions started and/or continued in the annual work
programmes for 2009 and 2010. The second report covered the initial main
results achieved, as well as the major initiatives covered by the annual work
programme for 2011, which was adopted in 2010. For 2011, the level of
implementation of MEETS operational credits was 97%[1]. This third
report provides an overview of the progress made by the Member States and the
Commission (Eurostat) in implementing the activities under the MEETS Programme
during 2012. All MEETS
activities are in line with the strategy set out in the Communication of 10
August 2009 from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on
the production method of EU statistics: a vision for the next decade[2]. 2. OBJECTIVES,
ANNUAL ACTIONS AND PRIORITIES In 2011, consideration
was given to streamlining the MEETS Programme as part of the wider discussion
on negative priorities within the European Statistical System (ESS). This
resulted in a number of MEETS actions being integrated. The
collaborative networks in the ESS, known as ‘ESSnets’, remain a major means of
implementing the objectives of the MEETS Programme. ESSnets are a way to
develop new projects where a few Member States interested in a specific field actively
collaborate on common tasks and then disseminate the results to the non-participating
Member States. This helps to harness synergies, save costs and share best
practices, while developing specific actions that are beneficial for the ESS as
a whole. All the ESSnets
operating within the MEETS Programme were launched during the first three years
of the Programme. The annual work programme for 2012 continued the actions
started by these ESSnets for the modernisation of enterprise and trade statistics.
In addition, further action was initiated in 2012 to help Member States achieve
the goals of reducing the burden on businesses and, at the same time, enable
the ESS to respond to new needs for statistical information. In total, the EU budget for the 2012 work programme is set
at nearly € 9 million, and it covers 17 annual actions, plus the necessary technical
and administrative support to implement the programme. Grants, either through
ESSnets or in the form of individual grants (at 82%), remain the most common
instrument for financing the actions. 2.1. Objective
1: To review priorities and develop target sets of indicators for new areas Identifying
areas of lesser importance Since the ESSC adopted a new strategy-driven approach in November
2010, the areas of lesser importance in business and trade statistics have been
identified in the framework of the annual strategic review of Eurostat's
priorities. The review in 2010 resulted in the streamlining of the MEETS
programme and the identification of a number of negative priorities which need
to be developed further into concrete proposals for amending existing legal
acts. The negative priorities listed for 2012 concern the statistics/series on
Kind of Activity Unit in Annexes 2 and 4 of the Structural Business Statistics
(SBS) Regulation[3]
and the industrial new orders variable of Annex A to the Short-Term Statistics
(STS) Regulation[4].
Furthermore, discussions started on reducing the requirements for Intrastat and
on rebalancing the international trade statistics for goods and services in
favour of services. The reduction and other simplification actions listed for 2013
include the simplification/ harmonisation of revision policies
in Business Statistics, the continuation of the work for the provision of
common tools, for example EGR; the discussion on the review of the multi-annual
series in the SBS Regulation Annexes 2-4 was also reopened. There will be a fundamental revision and
integration of business related statistics via a common legal framework for the
collection, compilation, transmission and dissemination of statistics on the
economic activities of the business sector, the Framework Regulation
Integrating Business Statistics (FRIBS). The common denominators used in all
domains will be NACE (for activities) and CPA (for products). Overall, this
approach is expected to reduce the statistical burden on businesses and on the
NSIs. As part of this, Eurostat’s aim isto reform
Intrastat[5] by means of the so-called international trade package or SIMSTAT,
which tackles the simplification of Intrastat, the much needed improvement of
the quality of the related statistical data and the need to develop
international trade in services statistics at one and the same time. Currently,
Intrastat is the most burdensome statistical area. It imposes more than 50% of
all statistical burden on businesses. Developing new areas (enterprise groups, globalisation, entrepreneurship, innovation) Globalisation
and entrepreneurship are two policy areas for which statistics are not yet
fully developed. Further work will be carried out in 2013 to follow up the
progress on methodology and to test results. As a result of
the streamlining undertaken in 2011, further methodological work and assessment
of the methodology developed for compiling economic indicators on globalisation
and statistics on enterprise groups have been carried out in the framework
of two ESSnets. Definition and development of a target set of globalisation
indicators has been dealt with by the ESSnet on measuring global value chains,
whereas the general assessment of the methodological work on new indicators
based on enterprise groups was undertaken by the ESSnet on profiling of large
and complex multinational enterprise groups. Cooperation with
the OECD on further development of the joint Entrepreneurship Indicator
Programme (EIP) continued in 2012. In particular, the focus has been on
establishing high-growth indicators for innovative firms, that are servicing
the newly established ‘Innovation Union headline indicator’. At the same time, an
initiative to provide a legal basis for employer business demography was
launched in order to produce harmonised data from all EU Member States in line
with international data in the EIP. Support continued to be provided for
developing and establishing new indicators describing the framework for determining
the areas of ‘access to finance’, ‘R&D, innovation and technology’,
‘capabilities/skills’ and ‘culture for entrepreneurship’. 2.2. Objective
2: To achieve a streamlined framework of business-related statistics Integrating concepts and methods within
the legal framework Business
statistics are compiled in accordance with Community legislation, which has
developed over the years and is not necessarily consistent in terms of concepts,
scope, definitions, methodology, etc. As mentioned above, the MEETS Programme envisages
an overhaul of the legislation in order to streamline the framework for
business statistics. This revision is needed in order to enable users to use
and compare statistics from different sources. Another driver for more
consistent legislation and methodology is the emerging architecture of
integrated production systems for business statistics. Without further
harmonisation of concepts, definitions and methodologies, this integration
cannot take place. To tackle this issue, the ESSnet on Consistency of
concepts and methods of business and trade related statistics was set up. In
2010 and 2011, two work packages were launched in order to analyse the possible
lack of consistency in statistical units, resp. in population frames for
different surveys, classifications and their applications. Work on the above issues
has continued in 2012. Furthermore, in 2012 a third work package was launched to
analyse the problems of consistency related to characteristics
and definitions. Developing statistics on enterprise groups A great deal of progress has been made in the context of the EuroGroups
Register[6]
(EGR), the aim of which is to provide consistent and coordinated survey
frames for high quality statistics relating to globalisation. The ESSnet on EGR methodology was set up in 2008. In 2009 and
2010, EGR populations of 5000 multinational enterprise groups (MNEs) were
produced. In 2011, the EGR population was extended to 10 000 MNEs. In 2012, the
methodology for central and national EGR processes and the data model was
further developed (EGR version 2) along with a plan for future management of
the EGR. Dissemination has been improved by opening a web platform for the EGR
documentation. A new ESSnet was launched in 2012 and continued to work with a
view to achieving full coverage of the EGR population for FATS and FDI and
associating national central banks in the EGR as producers and users. The aim
is to have a stable system in place, by the end of 2013, with a coverage that serves
FATS and FDI statistics. Remote access for users of national statistical
offices and national central banks should also be in place. The main objective is
the integration of the frame populations of EGR, FATS and FDI. At the end of
2009, the ESSnet on profiling of large and complex multinational enterprise
groups was launched in order to develop and implement a methodology for
profiling. In 2012, the ESSnet continued its work on the methodology by taking
into account the results of the tests carried out in 2011. Guidelines and
documentation have been developed and the implementation of the operating
methods for the profiling model in Member States was funded. In 2012, a start
was made on the work to test and assess the methodological work on statistics
based on enterprise groups in non-ESSnet Member States. Conducting Community surveys to minimise
the burden on enterprises Following
preparations carried out in 2011, a study was undertaken in 2012 to provide methodologies
for the use of EU sampling schemes in data collections. 2.3. Objective
3: To support the implementation of a more efficient method of producing
enterprise and trade statistics Making better
use of data that already exist in the statistical system, including the
possibility of estimates The work on "data warehousing and data linking in the production
of business statistics” is being carried out by an ESSnet that was set up
in the second half of 2010. In 2011 the ESSnet focussed on reviewing current
practices in integrated business data systems in the ESS Member States and on identifying
the main common problems in this area. In 2012 the work focussed on three main areas
containing all the subjects identified by the Member States as most relevant in
a statistical data warehouse, namely: metadata related to the statistical data
warehouse and the two major aspects for building and implementing the
statistical data warehouse, namely the methodological aspect and the
architectural/technical aspect. The initial results were presented and discussed
with the ESS Member States in a workshop which took place in May 2012. This
work will continue in 2013 and the next workshop is scheduled for February
2013. Furthermore, a
great deal of progress was achieved in the three projects covering the linking
of micro-data for individual statistics: The project on linking micro data on
international sourcing with business statistics data continued. The ESSnet
on measuring global value chains, which started in 2011, continued the
methodological development work to compile data on the increasingly globalised manner
in which businesses organise their activities and how this impacts on job
creation and sustainable growth. The aim of the project is to help policy
makers to take better informed decisions and to monitor the
globalisation/internationalisation of economies by developing and providing
indicators on economic globalisation. In 2012 the grant agreements for the
micro data linking were signed, and in 2013 participating Member States will
assess and test the micro data linking methodology and produce linked micro
data sets for the impact analysis of internationally fragmented production
chains. –
The project on data linking of trade and
business statistics will start up again in 2013. Prior to 2011 an external
study was conducted to develop the methodological framework in order to produce
statistical indicators on external trade by business characteristics, and a
pilot data collection took place to test its feasibility. In 2013, Member
States will develop and compile an extended set of indicators based on trade
and business micro data. The new indicators will then be included in the TEC
(trade by enterprise characteristics) database. –
The ESSnet on linking micro-data on ICT usage
was finalised in 2012, and produced new statistical indicators by linking data
from business registers, statistical surveys on ICT use and e-commerce in
enterprises, structural business statistics and innovation surveys. It also
produced an extended toolbox to analyse the impact of ICT on enterprise
performance, including a metadata repository and software for linking and
analysing micro datasets. In addition to analysis of linked businesses' data,
the ESSnet analysed the situation in participating countries with regard to the
survey and sampling strategies related to business statistics, and made
recommendations to improve the representativeness of linked data. The ESSnet drew
up and agreed a protocol containing rules and conditions for disseminating the
results of the data analysis to a wider public. The ESSnet on "Methodology
for modern business statistics (optimal sampling, model based estimation, data
integration)" was launched in 2010 and started the second phase
of its programme at the end of 2012. Its main aim is to
provide methodological guidance to support modernisation and integration of ESS
business statistics. In addition to methodological developments concerning
specific production steps (design, data collection and estimation), the project
summarises the body of business statistics methods in the coherent framework of
an electronic handbook. The handbook will be both a reference work and a
training manual. In the second and final phase, the ESSnet will draw
conclusions on the work done on the specific production steps and complete the
handbook to cover every step of the statistical production process, thereby
contributing to the optimisation of ESS business statistics. Making better use of data that already exist in the economy The ESSnet on
the use of administrative and accounts data, which was launched in 2009,
continued to investigate the practical issues related to the use of these data
for business statistics purposes. The results of the research and analytical
work done during the three years of activity has been further developed into
recommendations and dissemination of good practices. The main results achieved
so far concern the preparation of the overview of national practices on the use
of administrative data, the description of the methods used for estimation of
incomplete data sets when using administrative data for short-term statistics,
and the production of a list of indicators for assessing the quality of
business statistics based on administrative data. In order to help
Member States to use administrative data in the most efficient way for
statistical purposes, the MEETS programme has continued to provide support
to the NSIs to develop their systems, with the aim of integrating data from
different sources into the statistical production process. This should lead to
a reduction in the reporting burden on companies and an improvement in the
quality of statistical information. In 2012, the Member States were invited to participate in
the project "Facilitation of data transfer from enterprises to national
statistical institutes". Support was provided for the development of
IT systems for the collection of statistical data from enterprises, the
development of national statistical taxonomies and the creation of national
statistical XBRL taxonomies. Developing tools for the more efficient
extraction, transmission and treatment of data New grant agreements with Member States were signed in 2012 as part
of the project entitled "Making better use of customs data in external
trade statistics (Extrastat)". This support helps Member States to adapt
their data collection systems for Extrastat statistics to the new customs
systems of the Modernised Customs Code[7]. 2.4. Objective 4: To modernise
Intrastat Harmonising
methods to improve quality under a simplified Intrastat As a result of the streamlining exercise, the two projects
"Improvement of data quality under a simplified Intrastat system" and
"Reduction of asymmetries in Intrastat" were merged into one at the
end of 2010; the title of this new project was "Harmonising methods to improve
quality in intra EU-trade statistics". In 2012 a tender was launched for
the further development of methods and practices related to the compilation of
EU trade statistics. Its aim was to update the relevant documentation and to identify
recommended practices. In addition, support was provided to Member States to
implement the harmonized methods and practices needed in order to improve
quality in intra-EU trade statistics. The work to reduce assymetries at
detailed and aggregated level was continued by providing support to Member
States to conduct bilateral or multilateral reconciliation studies. Making better
use of administrative data Grants were also
signed in 2012 to enhance the use of administrative data by Member States when
producing intra-EU trade statistics. Theiraim is to reduce the response burden
and improve the quality of intra-EU trade statistics. Work is focused on the
use of administrative data for the validation of data collected in the
Intrastat system and the replacement of statistical surveys, in addition to the
(further) development of joint data collection systems in a number of Member
States for Intrastat, VAT and VAT Information Exchange (VIES). Improving and facilitating data exchange
within Intrastat The studies
undertaken and the support provided to Member States have resulted in the increased
use of electronic means and technologies for data collection, production,
exchange and validation through automated and secure processes, and the
application of advanced statistical concepts for error detection and
auto-correction. 3. CONCLUSION The MEETS
Decision details the actions which are to be financed during the period covered
by the programme. This substantiates the relatively large number of initiatives
undertaken in the first two years of the programme. However, one of the outcomes
of the economic and financial crisis of 2008 was a "saturation" of
financing possibilities in the NSIs, due to the lack of human resources.
Therefore, there was a need to streamline the programme by integrating certain
initiatives and/or focusing them on the six main areas organised through
ESSnets, which are: consistency of concepts and methods; EGR; profiling large
and complex multinational enterprise groups; micro-data linking and data
warehousing in statistical production; methodology for business statistics; and
the use of administrative and accounting data. The ESSnets,
especially those that started in 2009 and early 2010, have done sterling work,
in particular on the EGR methodology, Profiling and the Use of administrative
data. As far as the other main pillars of the MEETS programme (consistency of
legal acts, data warehouse and data linking initiatives) are concerned, these activities
are also now well on track. Whereas in 2011 they were still dealing with
preparatory work, putting the basic infrastructure in place (launching ESSnets,
multi-beneficiary grant agreements, etc.) and creating networks of national
experts, in 2012 they have already started to produce practical results. In addition, financing
through individual grants has continued, mainly in order to accompany the progress
in methodology and to test certain methodological recommendations, but also to
develop the tools to make extraction, transmission and processing of data more
efficient. A number of results are already available, but most actions are
still ongoing. It is important
to regard all actions as inter-connected initiatives, so as to ensure that the national
procedures for the collection of enterprise and trade statistics become more
efficient. This demanded a long-term commitment and constant monitoring. The 2012 report
is the last annual report of the MEETS programme. 2013 will be the last operational
year of this programme. All actions will be finalised, and all of the concrete
final results have to be available by 31 December 2013. The final report on the
implementation of the MEETS programme that needs to be submitted to the
European Parliament and the Council by 31 July 2014 must therefore also include
all of the actions and results of 2013. Furthermore, the final report is
required, in the light of the expenditure incurred by the Community, to assess the
benefits of the actions that accrue to the Community, the Member States and
providers and users of statistical information, in order to identify areas for
potential improvement. [1] Including a clearing of 15% of the budget in
September 2011. [2] COM(2009) 404. [3] Regulation (EC) No 295/2008 of the European
Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2008 concerning structural business
statistics (recast). OJ L 97, 9.4.2008, p. 13. [4] Council Regulation (EC) No 1165/98 of 19 May 1998
concerning short-term statistics. OJ L 162, 5.6.1998, p. 1. [5] Regulation (EC) No 638/2004 of the European
Parliament and of the Council of 31 March 2004 relating to the trading of goods
between Member States and repealing Council Regulation (EEC) No 3330/91 (OJ L
102, 7.4.2004, p.1), amended by Regulation (EC) No 222/2009 of the European
Parliament and of the Council (OJ L 87, 31.3.2009, p. 160). [6] The legal basis was established by Regulation (EC) No
177/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 February 2008
establishing a common framework for business registers for statistical purposes
and repealing Council Regulation (EEC) No 2186/93. OJ L 61, 5.3.2008, p.6. [7] Regulation (EC) No 450/2008 of the European
Parliament and of the Council of 23 April 2008 laying down the Community
Customs Code (Modernised Customs Code). OJ L 145, 4.6.2008, p.1.