(1)

Article 1 of Council Regulation (EC) No 2103/2005 of 12 December 2005 amending Regulation (EC) No 3605/93 as regards the quality of statistical data in the context of the excessive deficit procedure (1) inter alia revises the deadlines for reporting data in the context of the EDP to ensure their consistency with the deadlines of the European System of Accounts 95 (ESA 95) (2) transmission programme. As a result of this revision, from 2006 Member States will be obliged to report data in the context of the EDP before 1 April and 1 October of each year.

(2)

The Eurosystem’s requirements under Guideline ECB/2005/5 of 17 February 2005 on the statistical reporting requirements of the European Central Bank and the procedures for exchanging statistical information within the European System of Central Banks in the field of government finance statistics (3), should be based, for reasons of consistency, on ESA 95 statistical standards as far as possible. The deadlines in Article 4 of Guideline ECB/2005/5 for the biannual reporting of complete data sets by national central banks (NCBs) to the European Central Bank (ECB) therefore need to be revised.

(3)

In accordance with Article 12.1 and Article 14.3 of the Statute, ECB guidelines form an integral part of Community law,

1.

Article 4(1) is replaced by the following:

2.

Annex IV is amended as follows:

the word ‘September’ under the heading ‘First date of transmission’ in the right column of the two tables entitled ‘Current data’ and ‘Back data’ is replaced with the word ‘October’.