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E U R O P E A N U N I O N

| E U C O U N C I L W O R K I N G P A R T Y O N S T A T I S T I C S2

Framework Regulation Integrating Business Statistics FRIBS

No. of informal meetings: 2No. of formal meetings: 4: No. of technical trilogue meetings: 3 No. of political trilogue meetings: 1

The final version of the Regulation was supported in COREPER by 27 countries, representing 97.96% of the EU population and 1 country abstained.

Integrated European Social Statistics IESS

No. of informal meetings: 2No. of formal meetings: 2

No. of political trilogue meetings: 2

The final version of the Regulation was supported in COREPER by 25 countries, representing 96.10 % of the EU population and 3 countries abstained.

Migration and International Protection Statistics MIPS

No. of informal meetings: 2No. of formal meetings: 5

No. of technical trilogue meetings: 3 No. of political trilogue meetings: 2

The final version of the Regulation could not be advanced to COREPER’s agenda because was supported by only 19 countries, representing 63.16 % of the EU population.

For these 3 legislative files a total of 17 meetings were held, with the EP and Eurostat representatives. One Council Working Party On Statistics meeting was held on 31st January 2019.

Dossiers’ Statistics:

Tudorel ANDREI, President National Institute of Statistics Romania

From 1st January to 30th June 2019, Romania holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Un-ion, and in this context the Roma-nian National Institute of Statistics chairs the meetings of the Coun-cil Working Party on Statistics. We looked forward to work closely to-gether with our colleagues from the other Member States, especially our Trio-partners Finland and Croatia, to make progress on the current legis-lative statistics dossiers.

The overall priorities of the Romanian Presidency were set out in the Trio Presidency Programme of the Romania - Finland - Croatia. We also highly appreciated the work done by the previous Trio and the progress achieved by the Austrian, Bulgarian and Estonian Presidencies. Romanian Presiden-cy continued to focus on fields of business statistics, social statistics and the migration statistics, align-ing the legal framework to the new institutional context, therefore the Romanian Presidency strived to complete the pending dossiers on Framework Regulation Integrating Business Statistics - FRIBS, Integrat-ed European Social Statistics - IESS, and Migration and International Protection statistics - MIPS. For these dossiers a total of 17 meet-ings were held, with the EP and Eu-rostat representatives.

On FRIBS dossier a number of 2 informal meetings, 4 formal meetings, 3 technical trilogue meetings, and one political tri-logue meeting were held. The fi-nal version of the Regulation was supported in COREPER by 27 coun-tries, representing 97.96% of the EU population and 1 country re-turned a blank voting paper.

On IESS dossier a number of 2 informal meetings, 2 formal meetings, 2 political trilogue meetings were held. The final version of the Regulation was sup-ported in COREPER by 25 coun-tries, representing 96,10 % of the EU population and 3 countries re-turned a blank voting paper.

On MIPS dossier a number of 2 informal meetings, 5 formal meetings, 3 technical trilogue meetings, and 2 political trilogue meeting were held. The final ver-

Council Working Party On Statistics Romania’s Mission

sion of the Regulation could not be advanced to COREPER’s agenda be-cause it was supported by only 19 countries, representing 63,16 % of the EU population.

“We must do our best for Euro-pean statistics to overcome its chal-lenges” – this was the motto that guided us throughout the process of preparing and exercising the Romanian Presidency at the Coun-cil of the European Union. We had the honour and the privilege to work with a highly qualified team and we would like to thank them for their dedication in the most dif-ficult times. I also had the pleasure to excellently work with all Member States, as well as with the Commis-sion (Eurostat) and the European Parliament in the spirit of good co-operation. We made all our best to materialize our vision for these six months. However, the actual time at our disposal was much limited due to the Parliamentary elections. For this reason, we based our strategy on three crucial elements: transpar-ency, communication and continui-ty. Staying committed to our vision and to the will to contribute to the betterment of official statistics at the European level together, the INS Romanian PRES team experienced a challenging period.

The results are self-evident: the closure of the two important files in the fields of business statistics and social statistics and the progress on migration dossier.


The enthusiastic RO PRES team on the way to success (Feb. 2019, EP building, Strasbourg). In the picture: Mrs. Balea, Mrs. Alexevici, Mr. Andrei and Mrs. Stefanescu

The happy end of the negotiation with the EP for the FRIBS dossier (14 March 2019, Stras-bourg) In the picture: Mr. Lewandowski, EP rapporteur, Mrs. Kotzeva, DG of Eurostat and Mr. Andrei, RO NIS president and other EP members.

A Unique ExperienceDaniela ȘTEFĂNESCU, Director of European Affairs and International Cooperation, NIS Romania

Throughout my profession-al career in the National Institute of Statistics, 28 years of experi-ence in international cooperation, I can say that the period of prepa-ration and exercise of the Roma-nian Presidency at the Council of the European Union was the most intense: I lived the most unique challenges; I faced the decision-making fast-pace of the work of the European institutions, the Council, the European Parlia-ment and the Commission; I have known some of the most diverse personalities in the European en-vironment.

The whole process of me-diating the views of the member states, exercising RO PRES as an impartial broker in their relations with them, as well as representa-tives of the European institutions, was an experience that I will cher-ish over time.

I have lived with the same intensity the years of prepara-tion and then the accession of Romania to the European Union, with all that meant the negotia-tion of the chapter “Statistics” of the acquis communautaire;

I have now had the hon-our and the joy, like an arch over time, to be part of the National Statistics Institute of the RO PRES,

as vice president of the Council Working Party on Statistics.

The efforts of the team led by the NIS President, Mr. Tudorel Andrei, the energy, the dedica-tion - all led to results, we can say, remarkable: the closure of two important files in the fields of business statistics and social statistics and the progress on migration file.

R O M A N I A N P R E S I D E N C Y I N T E R I M R E P O R T | 5

Council Working Party On Statistics The Finnish Presidency Team

Anita Heinonen STATISTICS FINLAND

The Finnish Presidency team thinks that Romania has done ex-cellent work and achieved a lot already during their Presidency. Main visible achievements are political agreements with the Eu-ropean Parliament with two sta-tistical files.

Romania invited their Trio-partners of Finland and Croatia to observe all official tri-logues. Finland gratefully took this opportunity in order to pre-pare for their Presidency and ob-served in total seven different tri-logues concerning business and migration statistics files.

Originally, Finland had thought that Romania will not start trilogues on business sta-tistics as there were only so little time before parliament’s recess.

Because of that Finnish team was especially keen to follow the file. Finland got a chance to partici-pate in drafting sessions of busi-ness statistics led by the Presi-dency. We also followed trilogues of migration file and think that Romania managed to formulate a well-balanced compromise.

Altogether, the Romanian Presidency handled the trilogues very professionally while creating positive atmosphere for the ne-gotiations. This clearly enhanced EP’s willingness to make compro-mises.

We wish our Romanian col-leagues successful continuation of the Presidency and look for-ward to the Handover meeting in Sinaia in June.

Best regards ,Finnish Presidency Team on Statistics


FRAMEWORK REGULATION INTEGRATING BUSINESS

European Parliament legislative resolution of 16 April 2019 on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics, amending Regulation (EC) No 184/2005 and repealing 10 legal acts in the field of business statistics (COM(2017)0114 – C8-0099/2017 – 2017/0048(COD))

FRIBS


Miracles Can Happen!

Janusz LEWANDOWSKI, European Parliament Rapporteur

Statistically speaking, miracles sometimes happen!

In 14th March the European Parliament and Council reached a provisional agreement in trilogue on the new framework regulation on European business statistics (FRIBS).

I was responsible for this dossier in the European Parlia-ment and, I must frankly admit, I was rather sceptical about its adoption still in this parliamenta-ry term.

However, the encouraging attitude of Mr. Tudorel Andrei, President of INS Romania and the

Romanian Presidency convinced me that it might be worth trying, despite the time constrains.

All our efforts have paid off. The new framework on business statistics is probably the biggest simplification of the EU regulation during this parliamentary term - 10 legal acts are repealed and replaced with one regulation, in the context of the European Com-mission’s regulatory fitness and performance (REFIT) programme.

It was, in a sense, the fulfil-ment of the legacy of Barroso II Commission, in which I was re-sponsible for budget and financial programming.

In the course of negotiations, we secured that the cost and bur-den on Member States and busi-ness is as low as possible and that

the new framework on statistics is stable and transparent, while re-specting data confidentiality.

The final text guarantees also that the collection of new ‘fi-nancial indicators’ and new data on ‘environment and climate’ (in-troduced by the EP) will be the subject of pilot studies with the strong intention of being intro-duced to the business statistics.

On Monday 25th of March the provisional agreement was adopted by 39 votes in favour and 0 votes against by the Industry, Research and Energy Committee (ITRE) of the European Parliament. The plenary vote has been sched-uled for April.

FRIBS


Nina ALEXEVICI, Director of the short-term economic statistics indicators, NIS Romania

Virginia BALEA, Deputy director of the structural business statistics, NIS Romania

What is FRIBS?

Business statistics is one of the three pillars of the European Statistical System. Each pillar covers a set of primary statistics respond-ing to multiple needs that serve as a basis for the national accounts system or balance of payments as well as a basis for indicators useful for policy and strategy needs.

The objective of this propos-al for a regulation, which is part of the REFIT program, is to establish a common legal framework for:

� The development, production and dissemination of European statistics related to structure, economic activity and perfor-

mance of enterprises; � The European network of

business registers and the Eu-ropean register of enterprise groups (EGR).

Areas covered: short-term statistics, structural statistics, in-ternational trade of goods and services, information society, re-search-development, investment, globalization.

FRIBS tour until the presidency

On 6th of March 2017, the Eu-ropean Commission presented to the Council and the European Par-liament the proposal for a regula-tion of the European Parliament and of the Council on European Enterprise Statistics - FRIBS.

The European Union Council Working Party on Statistics (CWPS) discussed the proposal during its twelve meetings from September 2017 to December 2018.

On 12th of December 2018, the Committee gave the Austrian Presidency a mandate containing the Council’s offer to start nego-tiations with the European Parlia-ment.

Activities carried out by the Romanian Presidency team

Under the Presidency of Romania, the following steps were taken:

� Consultation of Member States on the European Parliament’s amendments in January;

� Three technical meetings (technical trilogues) with the Par-liament, and the Commission on 22 February, 4 and 6 March 2019;

� A written consultation with the Member States was launched on 8 March 2019 in preparation for the political trilogue scheduled for 14 March 2019; the vast major-ity of delegations supported the mandate;

In the political trilogue of 14th March 2018, a political agree-ment was reached in line with the mandate of the Member States without any change.

Experience of the presidency team

Following the consultation of the Member States, the tech-nical team identified the amend-ments that should be subject to

Amending European Regulation On Business Statistics

continued on page 9...


negotiations during the techni-cal trilogues, namely new data requests, legal architecture and flexibility.

During the first techni-cal meeting, the negotiation and acceptance points were outlined by each of the par-ties involved. Thus, for greater flexibility (new fields and new variables), the Parliament will accept the current proposal on legal architecture.

The Romanian Presidency team had launched a written consultation on the compro-mise text proposal and has bi-lateral contacts with some of the Member States.

Following the consultation and contact with the experts from the Member States, the

new compromise text was pro-posed, which was agreed by the rapporteurs and shadow rap-porteurs, as well as the Commis-sion and the vast majority of the Member States, so the new text of the regulation was approved by 27 votes for and one return of a blank voting paper, in the COREPER - Committee of Per-manent Representatives in the European Union - meeting on March 20th.

Framework Regulation In-tegrating Business Statistics - FRIBS presidency representa-tives appreciate the extremely favourable spirit of the negotia-tions, considering it to be a very interesting professional and in-ter-human experience.

We express our thanks the representatives of the European

Trilogue on Business Statistics 14 March 2019 ©European Union 2019 - Source : EP...continuation of page 8

Parliament, the European Com-mission, the Council’s Technical Secretariat, the trio representa-tives and the Member States for the extremely intense activity.

Let us all be proud of our success. Business statistics has made a major step towards modernizing it and respond-ing more quickly and flexibly to the changes that the European economy will face.

FRIBS


Sophie LIMPACHDirector, European Commission (Eurostat)

Towards a new legal framework for business and trade statistics

Some years ago, the Euro-pean Commission launched an initiative to modernise the le-gal framework for business and trade statistics in the context of the regulatory fitness and perfor-mance (REFIT) programme.

The original idea was to streamline 10 complex and out-dated legal acts and replace them with one common legal framework, while also making the existing statistics more inno-vative and relevant.

This idea will very soon be-come a reality. Personally, this is something I am extremely happy about because I contributed sig-nificantly to a number of the new

Towards A New Legal Framework For Business And Trade Statistics

statistical features included in the final text of this framework regu-lation, in addition to represent-ing the Commission throughout the entire negotiation process.

In particular, the framework includes a wide-scale exchange of micro-data between the EU Member States – a statistical first. As of 2022, each Member State collecting intra-EU trade mi-cro-data from their exporters on a monthly basis will share these data in a timely fashion with the partner Member State con-cerned.

These data can then be re-used to compile import statistics, instead of automatically needing to carry out specific surveys on importers. This new possibility, together with increased flexibili-ty in using alternative data sourc-es and new statistical methods, can help to reduce data collec-tion direct from businesses - thus lightening their administrative burden.

Another major achievement lies in the future availability of more relevant business statistics. These include increased cover-age of services (representing 75% of our economy), better meas-urement of European multina-tional enterprises, new entrepre-neurship indicators, new regional enterprise demography data, as well as dynamic measurement

of innovation and digitalisation (achieved by adapting the indica-tors to be compiled at each data collection round).

Lastly, consolidating sta-tistical requirements into one common legal framework will support the practical integration of business and trade statistics and enhance their internal con-sistency, to the benefit of our us-ers. Achieving this positive out-come took time and resilience. Following a series of technical discussions with experts from the Member States, the Europe-an Commission adopted its pro-posal in March 2017, marking the start of the co-legislative process.

The Council Working Party on Statistics then only began its discussions in March 2018 under the Bulgarian Presidency, and I am very grateful that it started to tackle this complex file. I also have enormous appreciation for the work done by the Austrian Presidency, which finalised the Council’s general approach just before the end of its term in De-cember 2018.

It paved the way for the Romanian Presidency to start the last phase of the process - namely inter-institutional negoti-ations. I was really impressed by this young Romanian Presiden-cy, which managed to rally the



Concerning legislation on statistics, legislative proposals come from Eurostat in the Com-mission. The proposals are then discussed in parallel at the level of the two co-legislators. Once ready, both institutions begin the negotiation process in order to reach a final agreement.

For statistics, on the Coun-cil side, proposed legislation is first discussed within the remit of the Working party level on “Sta-tistics” in the General Secretariat of the Council in Brussels. Those meetings are mainly attended by representatives of National Sta-tistics Institutes from the Mem-ber States.

FRIBS proposal was pub-lished on 10/03/2017 but discus-sions only started under the Bul-garian presidency during the first semester of 2018 and continued during the Austrian Presidency. By the end of 2018, the Council agreed on a common position and was ready to start the nego-tiations with the European Parlia-ment who adopted its position on 23/03/2018. Discussions there-fore could start. Both institutions had to find a good balanced compromise which is satisfactory to all institutions.

The main difficulty the Ro-manian Presidency was confront-ed with, is the time pressure. In-

Catherine COLLARTPolitical administrator, General Secretariat of the Council of the EU

Inter-institutional negotiations between the European Parlia-ment and the Council on FRIBS

Before telling my experience regarding the FRIBS negotiations with the European Parliament and with the Romanian Presidency, I will maybe recall the overall pro-cess for the “Ordinary Legislation Procedure”, the main procedure in place at European Union in order to adopt legislation.

This process involves the three main Union institutions: the Commission, who has a right of initiative and submits its legisla-tive proposals simultaneously to the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament, the co-leg-islators, who discuss, amend and adopt (or not) the legislation.

Inter-Institutional Negotiations On FRIBS

support of the Member States and actually conclude this critical phase in less than three months and in one political trilogue!

I was told by some of my ex-perienced colleagues that this is a rare feat indeed…from my per-spective, as it was my very first legal file, I fear that the bar is now set very high for the future!

I would like to stress that this European Commission initia-tive was a joint effort of my entire Directorate and many colleagues have contributed over the years to this important work. As time went by, we were asked wheth-er we would actually manage to realise a framework regulation on business statistics, but, as the saying goes, when the going gets tough, the tough get going...

Our determination helped us throughout the whole period, but particularly in the last few months when time was running out before the European Parlia-ment recess.

Luckily, we could count on excellent cooperation with our colleagues from the European Parliament, the Council Secretar-iat and the Romanian Presidency. Working together in a positive spirit and focusing on a common goal finally paid off and made the impossible possible!

We can now say with pride that together we have laid down the legal basis for delivering even higher quality business and trade statistics in the future. continued on page 12...

...continuation of page 10


During those meetings, each co-legislator explained their re-spective positions, identified their similarities and their divergences, exposed their motivation and ra-tionale. In parallel, the Presidency managed to have constant contacts with the other NSIs to keep them in-formed on the status of the discus-sion, to propose possible compro-mises and to ask for their support.

Eurostat was also an impor-tant actor in the negotiations, be-ing constructive in the process by bringing its expertise and by sug-gesting possible compromises.

All those combined efforts by each party have been fruitful as a full political agreement was successfully reached during a “tri-logue” meeting (Presidency, Parlia-ment and Eurostat) in Strasbourg, on 11 March 2019.

Political agreement which has been, almost unanimously, endorsed at Council level on 20 March 2019.

deed, due to the Parliamentary elections in May, the time-frame left for a possible adoption of the file was squeezed to a minimum. In short, what normally could have been done during several months had to be achieved in three…

The Romanian Presidency was at first not really convinced that it could be successful in con-cluding this dossier.

The positions of both the Parliament and the Council were diverging on a number of issues and this added to the time-pres-sure, and to the difficulty to prop-erly report back to the Statistics group as no more meetings in Brussels were planned, made it look rather difficult if not im-possible. Nevertheless, after a fruitful first meeting with Mr Le-wandowski, rapporteur on the Parliament side for this file, it was decided to give it a try. Intense work then started and three pre-paratory meetings with the Par-liament took place.

The next steps now are only procedural ones, the Parliament voted at Committee level on 25

March, and will confirm its vote during its Plenary in April.

The final adoption of the regulation will nevertheless be delayed until the last quarter of 2019, delay induced by the forth-coming elections in Parliament.

This successful outcome, in such a short time period, has been made possible thanks to the efforts and dedication of all parties involved.

The Presidency, together with the representatives of the Member States, the Parliament and Eurostat worked in good collaboration and did not spare their efforts to achieve this goal.

...continuation of page 11

Trilogue on Business Statistics 14 March 2019 © European Union 2019 - Source : EP


Experience Of A Presidency Trio Member

HR PRES 2020: Experience of a PRES Trio member

Darko Jukić Marija KamenskiCroatian Bureau of Statistics

As a member of the current PRES Trio RO-FI-HR, we began to cooperate with colleagues from statistical offices of Romania and Finland at a very early stage of preparations for our Presidency. From the very beginning all Trio partners shared a common pref-erence for close cooperation and appreciated advantages of such an approach. Going through the pro-cess together enables supporting each other, being each other’s qual-ity check as well as an having an ad-ditional voice when needed.

Romanian colleagues who were the first in line to face the challenge, and chairing the Work-ing Party on Statistics certainly represents a challenge, advocated transparency and gave us access to number of meetings, mostly in

scope of ongoing trilogues. As Cro-atia is the last country of the Trio to hold the Presidency and not a direct successor to RO PRES, we ap-preciate very much their decision to include us in those meetings and in doing so allow us an early access to, what it is proving to be, some of a more challenging responsibilities of the Presidency.

Having a preview into: im-mense amount of work necessary to prepare positions, documents, meetings; number of conversations it takes to truly understand a point of view that is different from one’s own; absolute necessity of willing-ness to deliberate issues raised in scope of statistical discussions in entirely different environment and focused to very different considera-tions; have made this an invaluable experience for us.

Based on this experience we conclude that when it comes to holding the Presidency of the CWPS it is not only that learning by doing is the best approach but it is the only approach. Croatian repre-

sentatives participated at trilogues about proposals for regulations regarding migration and business statistics. Very different files with different challenges. While dis-cussion about migration statistics demonstrated just how much an initial proposal can change during the legislation process and put a light on number of challenges to face during the coordination of na-tional positions, discussion about business statistics showed that with good preparation a swift progress is possible even on complex issues.

During the RO Presidency, on the basis of achievements of pre-vious Presidencies and high level of ambition and commitment of Romanian colleagues, serious pro-gress has been achieved in finalis-ing ongoing discussions. Croatian Bureau of Statistics congratulates our Romanian partners on this suc-cess and looks forward to future cooperation. Coming to the last stage of the RO Presidency over the CWPS, we would also like to con-firm our support to our colleagues from Statistics Finland and wish them the best of luck during their upcoming Presidency.

Concerning HR PRES, the Croatian Bureau of Statistics stays focused on using the upcoming months for straightening the Pres-idency team and it’s abilities and looks forward to cooperating with all stakeholders in a transparent manner and in a good faith. It is on this basics that we await our turn….


Andreea MiricăINS Romania President’s adviser

European business statistics

The need for consistent sta-tistics on businesses aimed at monitoring the impact of various policies required a new legislative instrument.

Such an instrument should aim at increasing relevance and timeliness of European business statistics as well as reducing the legal fragmentation within this field. In this context, creating a single frameworks for business statistics, such as FRIBS, was im-perative.

FRIBS addresses five key is-sues on business statistics: data sources to be harnessed; subject areas and topics to be covered; the creation of the Euro-groups Register of multinational enter-prise groups for statistical purpos-es at Union level; confidential data exchanges; quality, transmission and dissemination.

After two years of intensive work and close cooperation be-tween the European Commission, the Parliament and the Council, the draft Regulation on Europe-an Business Statistics was finally adopted by the Parliament on the 16th of April 2019.

A More Consistent Legislative Framework For Business And Social Statistics

European statistics on persons and households

Reliable and timely social sta-tistics are the cornerstone for as-sessing the impact of different de-cisions on social conditions within the Member states at national and regional level. There are several legislative acts that govern the data collection process in this area, resulting in a highly fragmented production process. Such a pro-cess is difficult to manage, espe-cially under the increasing budget constraints. Therefore, there is a need for a common framework for European statistics on persons and households.

In this respect, the IESS leg-islative proposal was published in 2016. The regulation covers 7 do-mains of data collection: labour market, income and living condi-tions, health, education and train-ing, use of information and com-munication technologies, time use

and consumption. The European Parliament reached a positive de-cision on this dossier on the 16th of April 2019.

Migration statistics

Given the rapid changes in the characteristics of interna-tional migration, highly accurate statistics on migration, especially regarding asylum and managed migration, are needed. Therefore, a legislative proposal to revise and complete the current legal frame-work on migration statistics was launched in May 2018.

Although the dossier is rel-atively new, it generated strong debates both within the Council as well as during the negotiation process with the European Parlia-ment. One of the most intensive discussions, our team participated in, concerned the choice between the terms “illegal” and “irregular” when referring to a migrant. An-other sensitive area regards col-lecting statistics by gender or by sex.

With regard to this dossier, the Romanian Presidency team carried out 2 informal meetings and 5 formal meetings. The path to reaching a compromise within the Council has yet to be complet-ed, as 19 countries, representing 63.16 % of the EU population sup-port the file.


Laura ICHIM, head of the office of popu-lation and external migration statistics, INS Romania, migration file responsible

Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Reg-ulation (EC) No 862/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council on Community statistics on migration and in-ternational protection

The Migration Dossier took into account the steps to approve the proposal to amend Regula-tion no. 862/2007 of the Europe-an Parliament and of the Council on Community statistics regard-ing migration and international protection, namely Articles 4 to 7.

These articles refer to statis-tics on international protection, the prevention of illegal entry and residence, residence permits and residence of third-country nationals as well as return statis-tics.

During February and March, steps were taken to obtain a fa-vourable vote in COREPER on the migration file. Some of the Euro-pean Parliament’s amendments were considered unacceptable by several member countries, in-cluding Germany, Italy, The Neth-erlands, France, Denmark, Aus-tria. The requested data could not be provided by these coun-

tries, the administrative systems in the 28 Member States being very different, and the obtaining of data would have been very difficult to achieve or the invest-ments would have been very high. What can be implemented in a Member State without great effort or major adaptations of the national data collection or IT system, can cause significant im-plementation difficulties in other countries.

In order to decide whether these data can be produced in the future with a good cost-to-value ratio and a significant added val-ue of the resulting statistical in-formation for policy formulation and monitoring, a testing period is needed through studies. The letters sent by the countries to the Presidency are expressing ap-preciation for our efforts to find solutions to this regulation. Thus, the Presidency’s proposals for

advancing the dossier focused on identifying amendments that raised the most problems and to be introduced into pilot studies and feasibility studies.

The presidency tried several times to obtain a vote in COREP-ER, but because there was infor-mation that the number of votes required for adoption had not been obtained, the file was with-drawn from the COREPER’s agen-da.

All the efforts of the Presi-dency were cancelled on 16 April when the European Parliament expressed its position in a plena-ry session by voting a legislative resolution on the proposal to amend Regulation no. 862/2007. The document that was adopted as Parliament’s position does not include any changes from those agreed during the trilogues.

As a member of the Presi-dency team, my experience has been unprecedented. Negotia-tions within trialogues, contact with another system, sustained / intense work rhythm in the 3 weeks in Brussels and Strasbourg were a special experience, a peri-od of professional challenges.

Amending European Regulation On Migration And International Protection Statistics


INTEGRATED EUROPEAN SOCIAL STATISTICS

European Parliament legislative resolution of 16 April 2019 on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a common framework for European statistics relating to persons and households, based on data at individual level collected from samples (COM(2016)0551 – C8-0345/2016 – 2016/0264(COD))

IESS


Inter-Institutional Negotiations On Integrated European Social Statistics

Anke SCHNEIDERPolitical AdministratorGeneral Secretariat of the Council of the European UnionDG Life 1.C Employment and Social Policy

Integrated European Social Statistics (IESS) - inter-institu-tional negotiations between the European Parliament and the Council from 2016 to 2019:

Work by six Presidencies

The Commission submitted its legislative proposal in August 2016 to the two co-legislators (Eu-ropean Parliament and Council).

While the Parliament’s nego-tiating mandate was approved al-ready in June 2017 by the Plenary, on the Council side, the examina-tion of the proposal by the Work-ing Party on Statistics stretched over three consecutive Presiden-cies (Slovakia, Malta and Estonia). In March 2018, the Council even-tually reached is negotiating po-sition. The Bulgarian Presidency secured a provisional agreement with the Parliament in June 2018 after a series of six trilogues.

However, delegations deemed it necessary to re-negotiate a series of items. Therefore, an addition-al trilogue was prepared by the Austrian Presidency which did un-fortunately not materialise due to organizational reasons.

The efforts of the Austrian Presidency were continued by the Romanian Presidency. After two further trilogies, a final provisional agreement could be reached on 20 March 2019.

“Corrigendum” procedure be-cause of the EP elections

On 29 March, the trilogue deal was approved by the Perma-nent Representatives’ Committee. This now opens the way for the finalisation of the file.

However, as the imminent end of the Parliament’s term does not allow enough time for the fi-nal vote in Plenary, the so-called “corrigendum procedure” will be used by the Parliament. Under this procedure, the outgoing Par-liament adopts as its first reading position the provisional agree-

ment concluded in trilogue with-out technical finalisation (i.e. the legal-linguistic revision).

This revision will take place afterwards, and the new Parlia-ment will vote on a corrigendum of the text as finalised by the law-yer-linguists. And the Council will then proceed to the final adop-tion.

The signature of the legal act by the President of the European Parliament and the President of the Council and the publication in the Official Journal will follow shortly afterwards. In this case we can expect adoption in October.

Negotiating dynamics

As each file has its own dy-namics, let me share some spe-cific thoughts about the social statistics file: The European Com-mission (represented by Eurostat) proved once again to be a truly honest broker, being very helpful throughout the entire process in finding solutions for differences between the co-legislators.

While it is important, es-pecially during the negotiating phase in the Council, that the technical experts deal with their respective areas of expertise and that they consequently also lead the Council negotiating team in



Better Social Statistics For The European Union A Regulation On Integrated European Social Statistics

Gallo GUEYE, Director, European Commission (Eurostat)

A Regulation on Integrated European Social Statistics

Over the last decade, the so-cial situation in Europe has been a subject of high interest for poli-cy makers at both EU and nation-al levels. We have witnessed de-velopments in our societies and the public debate relating nota-bly to the subjects of inequalities, globalization and its benefits and drawbacks, integration of migrants, continuing high levels of unemployment in some coun-tries, low spending power and the working poor, and receptivity to post-truth arguments. This has made it yet more urgent to un-derstand better and faster the el-ements that affect the situations, real and perceived, of citizens.

In this context, and in line with the orientations endorsed by the European Statistical Sys-tem (ESS) in Wiesbaden in Sep-tember 2011, Eurostat has been working on a programme of modernisation of social statistics in close cooperation with the Member States’ national statis-tical institutes. The main objec-tives of the programme are to increase responsiveness to user needs as well as the quality and efficiency of social statistics.

To consolidate these joint efforts of the ESS, the European Commission adopted, in August 2016, a legislative proposal for integrated European social statis-tics (IESS). This draft regulation is the cornerstone of the moderni-sation of social statistics.

The new regulation will make it possible to meet new and emerging data requirements of policy makers in a context of rapidly evolving economic, social and policy priorities. Better and timelier statistical data will be produced on the labour market, income, health, education and skills. These data will support the European semester, the Europe-an Pillar of Social Rights and the Digital Agenda. The regulation will provide the statistics on the living conditions of citizens need-ed to support policies at regional and local levels. It will make it possible to have data of very high quality and on time, while allow-ing flexibility for future needs.

Lastly, the requirements of the regulation can be fulfilled by us-ing cost-efficient methods such as administrative data sources and innovative techniques.

During the legislative nego-tiations, all three institutions, the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission dedicated considerable efforts, in a spirit of compromise, to reach agreement in March 2019, on this very com-plex, innovative and far-reaching file in terms of sustainably mod-ernising and upgrading social statistics for better social policies for many years to come.

Excellent cooperation was received from the various Mem-ber States that assumed the presidencies of the Council work-ing party on statistics, from the Council secretariat and the col-leagues at the European Parlia-ment.

I would like to commend the excellent work of the col-leagues in Eurostat’s Directorate for Social Statistics for this excep-tional achievement. Finally, the decisive impetus from the Roma-nian Presidency during the last months of this European Parlia-ment term should be recognised, which made it possible to secure agreement of the co-legislators on the file.


Simona TOMA, expert NIS Romania, IESS responsible

Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a common framework for European sta-tistics relating to persons and households, based on data at individual level collected from samples, COM (2016) 551

The objective of this Proposal (IESS) is to streamline a number of separate domain-specific Regula-tions and to establish a common legal framework for the European statistics relating to persons and households, based on the individ-ual-level data collected from sam-ples.

Under the previous presiden-cies, the file passed through the Working Party level, was approved as a “General Approach” in COREP-ER, and was subject to six tri-logues. In the first meeting under the Austrian Presidency, there was a debrief of the trilogues and the Member States had the chance to ask the preceding Bulgarian Pres-idency and Eurostat questions on the trilogue result.

Some Member States sig-nalled approval, others were less satisfied with the outcome and asked for more time for national consultation and review. Member

Some Member States made it clear that, leaving Article 11(2a) aside, the text also contained other problematic issues (e.g. in-put harmonisation). The Austrian Presidency informed the EP about the outcome of the CWPS discus-sions. Another meeting, with the aim of finding a wording that is acceptable to both co-legislators and the European Commission (Eurostat), was proposed by the Presidency.

The Romanian Presidency succeeded, during a series of in-formal meetings with the MEPs, to convince that the blockage should be solved in the interest of all the parties involved and the EP accepted a political trilogue on 23rd of January with an article only on the agenda, that is the 11 (2a).

Following the political tri-logue meeting from 23 January 2019, the Article 11(2a) text was re-worded and an agreement between the institutions was reached.

At the meeting of the Statis-tics Working Group on 31 January 2019, the Romanian Presidency informed the Member States of the results of the trilogue and of the steps to follow. The Romanian Presidency was convinced that

Framework Regulation For The Production Of European Statistics On Persons And Households

States were invited by the Pres-idency to reflect about the out-come over the summer break.

Based on the feedback re-ceived, the EP Rapporteur was in-formed about the main concerns of the Member States, in particu-lar on Article 11(2a) on sampling frames and Article 14(1)(ca) on fi-nancing.

The European Parliament announced clarification regarding Article 14(1)(ca) by lawyer-linguists, ensuring that the article concerns EU budget only and does not touch the national budget of the Member States.

After further consultations with the European Parliament mainly Article 11(2a) was discussed in the Council Working Party on Statistics in 31 October 2018. A large majority of Member States made clear that the current word-ing of the article could not be sup-ported. continued on page 20...


the agreed package, including Article 11 (2a), is a solution that meets the needs of the Member States, especially with regard to cooperation with entities outside the European statistical system. It provides the necessary safeguards for Member States and will allow a sound development of the Euro-pean Statistical System in a quickly evolving and constantly changing environment.

Having the intention to sub-mit the dossier to COREPER, the Romanian Presidency made ef-forts to find an agreement with MS regarding the compromise text reached in trilogues, investigating under which conditions the Coun-cil would be in a position to agree the wording of the draft Regula-tion.

As already identified in the Working Party, the main issue con-cerns Article 11(2a). The Presidency proposes therefore to delete Arti-cle 11(2a). The related new review clause in Article 18a should hence also be deleted.

Furthermore, three techni-cal clarifications are considered necessary:

(a) in Article 13(2) (new) about input from EU agencies on specific topics;

(b) in Article 6 (1), in order to make the wording more precise, reflecting statistical practice; and

(c) in Article 14, in order to clar-ify that the provision about fund-ing refers to the Union budget.

The new proposed docu-ment was approved by COREPER I

the trilogues, not surprisingly, in the final phase of the negotiations, the Parliament expected from Council feedback and close in-volvement from the political level.

Therefore, in the last trilogue, the Council was represented by the Romanian Deputy Permanent Representative, Ambassador Cos-min Boiangiu, and the Commis-sion negotiating team was headed by the Commissioner for Employ-ment, Social Affairs, Skills and La-bour Mobility, Marianne Thyssen. This secured the decisive break-through in March 2019.

Looking back at where we started from, I can say that the fi-nal deal certainly fulfils the origi-nal aim of the proposal, that is to provide sound, reliable and timely statistics to monitor the social sit-uation and the impact of econom-ic developments and policies on social conditions in the Member States.

I would therefore like to ex-tend my sincere congratulations to the Romanian Presidency team for this big success and to all other earlier Presidencies involved in this file. Thank you all for the excellent cooperation. My special thanks go to Ambassador Boiangiu for his decisive contribution to achieving this success.

Anke SCHNEIDER

...continuation of page 19 meeting on 20th of February 2019 and the Romanian Presidency in-tends to meet the MEPs with the aim to reach a final agreement.

Simona TOMA...continuation of page 17

©️ 2019RO NIS Department of Communication

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