The European Parliament adopted, by 636 votes to 13 with 10 abstentions, a resolution amending the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning meat and livestock statistics. The report was tabled for consideration in plenary by Friedrich-Wilhelm GRAEFE ZU BARINGDORF (Greens/EFA, DE) on behalf of the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development.
The main amendments, adopted in the first reading of the codecision procedure, are as follows:
-some of the provisions, previously set out in the annexes, are clarified in the legislative text (in particular the definitions in Article 2 and the quality assessment in Article 17);
-from now on, Member States will have more room for manoeuvre in making use of administrative data rather than statistical surveys: in the case of use of administrative sources, Member States shall inform the Commission in advance about methods used and the quality of data. In the case of sources other than surveys, Member States will ensure this information is of at least equal quality to information obtained from statistical surveys;
-qualification as regards regional surveys: in order to limit the burden on Member States, the regional data requirements should not exceed the requirements under previous legislation. These requirements are optional for territorial units having less than 150 000 pigs, 75 000 bovine animals, 100 000 sheep and 25 000 goats if these territorial units summed up together contribute with 5% or less to the national population of the relevant species;
-transitional period: in order to ensure a smooth transition from the regime applicable under Directives 93/23/EEC, 93/24/EEC and 93/25/EEC, the Regulation should allow a transitional period of up to one year and, in the case of sheep, up to two years, to be granted to Member States where the application of this Regulation to their national statistical systems would require major adaptations and would be likely to cause significant practical problems.
-transmission deadlines: Parliament has amended some of the deadlines for transmission of the definitive statistics on livestock, for slaughtering in slaughterhouses and outside slaughterhouses, and meat production forecasts.
-frequency and reference period: the forecasts for pigs shall be produced twice a year by each Member State. Those Member States whose pig population is less than 3 million heads may produce these statistics only once a year. The forecasts for bovine animals shall be produced twice a year by each Member State . Those Member States whose bovine population is less than 1.5 million heads may produce these statistics only once a year. The reference periods were also amended.
-quality assessment and reports: Parliament inserted definitions for several terms, including "relevance", "accuracy", "timeliness" and "punctuality". Every three years, and for the first time eighteen months after the application of the current Regulation, Member States shall provide the Commission (Eurostat) with a report on the quality of the data transmitted. The quality reports shall describe: a) the organization of the surveys covered by the Regulation and methodology applied; b) the levels of precision achieved for the sample surveys referred to in this Regulation; c) the quality of sources used other than surveys, and d)the quality of the forecasts referred to in the Regulation;
-MEPS ask that the regulatory procedure with scrutiny be applied to comitology provisions, including the provisions on quality reports, the granting of transitional periods to Member States and the modifications of Annexes I, II, IV and V;
-the terminology used should be in line with the internationally agreed zoological nomenclature;
-lastly, the Regulation shall apply from 1 January 2009.