Community statistics on migration and international protection

2005/0156(COD)

The Commission presents a report on the implementation of Regulation (EC) No 862/2007 on Community statistics on migration and international protection. This report follows the first one adopted by the Commission in September 2012.

Progress made : since the 2012 report the data availability and completeness has significantly improved in all data collections:

  • general data quality improvements have been observed leading to better data accuracy, coherence and comparability;
  • enhanced quality and the increasing punctuality of data supplied by Member States have allowed the Commission to shorten the time needed for data dissemination, implying better timeliness of data releases and improving further the accessibility of data by the users;
  • as part of the implementation process, the Commission has continued to develop and maintain close cooperation with the different national authorities involved in the production and supply of data for the Regulation;
  • data collections under the Regulation have undergone further methodological and technical developments leading to improved guidance for the Member States;
  • the coming into force of the Regulation (EU) No 1260/2013 and related implementing measures (Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 205/2014) as well as Census 2011 round has also benefitted the quality of data received under the Regulation
  • the recent legislative developments in the area of migration and asylum have been integrated into methodological guidance of data collections on asylum and residence permits.

The Commission considers that improvements should continue, since specific accuracy issues still exist, namely the under-coverage (i.e., persons do not register their residence) and the over coverage (persons do not de-register as often there is no obligation or incentive to do it).

Use of statistics: the statistics produced under the Regulation are increasingly used by national administrations, international organisations, academic researchers and civil society groups working on a wide range of topics including the integration of immigrants, the development and monitoring of national asylum and immigration procedures, and the projection of the future population and labour force.

Comparability and coherence: since the 2012 report, the use of harmonised definitions for all data collections under the Regulation has greatly enhanced data comparability. The problems related to strict application of definitions have been hardest to address with the migration and acquisition of citizenship statistics covered by Article 3 of the Regulation. It is for these data that the greatest dissimilarities occur among national systems due to the variety of the data sources used.

In conclusion, the Commission considers that the data required under the Regulation should reflect the evolving needs of the users while taking into account the capacity of the data providers. This could lead to future proposals for amendments to the Regulation in order to add new data categories or specific disaggregation and/ or eliminate data requirements whenever they are considered less useful.

New data gaps have been identified by the Commission and addressed by other data collection approaches such as gentlemen's agreements (e.g. collection of data on first time asylum applicants, data on type of returns of irregular migrants, data on residence permits disaggregated by age and sex and cross classified with other breakdowns). Other data gaps like the breakdown of population data under Article 3 by individual country of citizenship as well as immigration / emigration by single previous / next country of residence cannot be addressed under the framework of voluntary agreements.

The Commission feels that in the longer-term, the redevelopment of European census statistics beyond 2021, with a possible move to more frequent (annual) statistics, is likely to result in greater availability of data on different aspects of migration. This should also contribute to fulfil evolving and emerging needs for migration-related statistics.

In the framework of the Commission’s Regulatory Fitness and Performance (REFIT) programme, the Commission will undertake actions to make EU law simpler and to reduce regulatory costs. Certain overlaps related to the statistical reporting in the existing legislation in the area of population and migration (e.g. in the area of residence permit statistics) have been already identified and could be tackled through a simplified legislation.