The Commission
presents a report on the implementation of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 of the
European Parliament and of the Council concerning the labour cost index (LCI)
Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 creates a common framework for producing and
transmitting comparable labour cost indices in the European Union. The
Commission (Eurostat) publishes a quarterly news release on the hourly labour
cost index. The Regulation provides that the Commission must submit a report
to the European Parliament and the Council every two years. The report should
look in particular at the quality of the data transmitted. Annual national
quality reports are compulsory under the LCI Regulation.
The report notes that
overall, the degree of compliance with the LCI Regulation has continued to
increase since the previous report in 2008. Most Member States comply with
its provisions. Member States have continued to channel resources into
implementing actions to achieve more comparable and timely index series. This
has clearly raised the overall quality and thus increased the usefulness of
the data.
Since comparability
and completeness have improved considerably, the report focuses on accuracy,
timeliness and coherence.
- Accuracy: there are concerns regarding accuracy with various aspects of
the LCI. Generally, they are due to shortcomings of the source data and
can lead to high volatility of the LCI series. In principle, accuracy
problems are discussed by the Member States affected in the yearly
quality report, and the Commission (Eurostat) monitors the progress made
or planned in the implementation of better sources. At the moment, three Member States are affected by accuracy
problems. Germany and Hungary currently do not use source data that
would allow them to comply fully with the regulation. LCI data delivered
by Greece often show unexplainable growth rates which are difficult to
reconcile with the developments in the labour market.
- Timeliness: this has continued to improve since the last report in 2008.
Nevertheless, two Member States (Belgium and Ireland) failed to deliver
the data on time. The Commission asked these countries to take the appropriate
measures to ensure that the deadlines for the submission of the data are
respected in the future.
- Coherence: in the annual quality report, Member States are asked to
compare the growth rates of the LCI with those of hourly compensation of
employees in national accounts (ESA95 definition). Both data collections
measure the same phenomenon with divergences in the definitions,
exhaustiveness of the sources and methodology for calculating the growth
rates. Since not all Member States produce quarterly data for hourly
compensation of employees (national accounts data), a complete overview
of coherence is not possible. Furthermore, as national accounts still
use the NACE rev.1 classification while the LCI uses NACE rev.2, the
comparison is restricted to a very small number of aggregated NACE
sections.
The Commission will
be monitoring the remaining non-compliance and quality issues regularly
through the data delivered and other national documentation. Where the
desired or planned improvements are not advancing appropriately, the relevant
national authorities will be approached, and the Commission will take the
necessary action to enforce compliance.