The European Parliament adopted the report by Zsolt Laszlo BECSEY (EPP-ED, HU) on the Community Statistical Programme 2008 to 2012. The main amendments introduced at Plenary are as follows:
- the programme shall be guided by the principal Community policy priorities of: (i) innovation, and growth; (ii) solidarity and human development; (iii) economic, social and regional cohesion, sustainable development and demographic challenges;
- Community statistics shall be disaggregated by gender, where appropriate;
- national authorities and the Community statistical authority shall: a) establish an institutional and organisational environment which promotes the effectiveness and credibility of national and Community statistical authorities producing and disseminating official statistics, including regional statistics based on the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS); b) cooperate with statistical bodies at international level in order to promote the use of international concepts, classifications and methods; c) provide, where requested and warranted, the necessary technical support in the area of statistical organisation, and enable good practice to be shared with other bodies or third countries; d) place emphasis on the quality of the statistical information (above all its reliability and comparability), taking due care to ensure the chronological continuity of the data collected and the possibility of scientific processing thereof;
- the Commission shall, in the preparation of the annual statistical work programmes, take account of the cost-effectiveness of the statistics produced and ensure an ongoing review of statistical priorities, with a view to making best use of available resources of the Member States and the Commission and to minimising the burden imposed on respondents. Prioritisation shall aim at balancing additional costs and burdens for new statistical requirements by reducing statistical requirements in existing domains of Community statistics and shall take place in close co-operation with the Member States;
- the Commission, after consulting the Statistical Programme Committee, shall present an intermediate progress report. This report will be submitted to the European Parliament and the Council not later than June 2010. It will address in particular the period of the second half of the current programme and the issue of the period to be covered by the next multi-annual statistical programme, taking into account the term of office of the European Parliament;
- related to the implementation of the programme, the Commission shall also provide a preliminary analysis of the competitive effects on small and medium-sized enterprises brought about by the proposed cuts in the administrative burden, and of the financial burden-sharing between Community and Member States budgets;
- the Commission shall also pay special attention to the issue of necessary datasets, tools and methodologies which will serve as the basis for the production of unbiased and objective analysis of the social and economic impacts of important areas which are in need of constant monitoring and review such as the Common Agricultural Policy, the services in the internal market and the next multiannual financial framework;
- at the end of the period covered by the programme, the Commission, after consulting the Statistical Programme Committee, shall present an evaluation report on the implementation of the programme, taking into account the views of independent experts.