Structural business statistics. Recast

The Commission presented a report on the implementation of Regulation (EC) No 295/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council on structural business statistics (SBS Regulation).

The report provides an overview of progress in implementing the SBS Regulation based on final data for the reference year 2013 in the following areas: (i) services, (ii) industry, (iii) trade, (iv) construction, (v) business services, (vi) business demography.

Firstly, it provides information on the measures taken by the Commission to ensure that high-quality European structural business statistics are made available, and on the implementation of the SBS Regulation by Member States.

Effectiveness of the Regulation: the report shows that, overall, the data sent by Member States are reasonably complete for all SBS modules.

Data availability was high (95%) for statistics on business services. It increased for medium and small countries, but decreased for large countries.

However, Eurostat considered the share of confidential data across Member States still as very high and therefore they are encouraged to put more effort towards reducing the amount of confidential data in the future.

Overall, compliance with the SBS Regulation with respect to the 2013 data has improved compared to the situation described in the previous report.

Future changes and developments: Eurostat is working with stakeholders in the European Statistical System (ESS) to adapt the statistical production process to major developments in society and the globalised economy using a set of measures as part of the Framework Regulation Integrating Business Statistics (FRIBS) project. The new legal framework for integrating business statistics deals with broader areas.

Proposed amendments to the current SBS requirements are as follows.

• divide the SBS population into 3 categories: independent enterprises, domestically-controlled and foreign controlled enterprises;
• introduce the distinction in SBS as to whether an enterprise is involved in international trade or not;
• align the methodology for foreign direct investment (FDI) and foreign affiliates statistics (FATS);
• take into account modes of supply (e.g., how services are exchanged between two countries) for a better representation of services;
• include trade in services according to business characteristics (STEC);
• establish statistics by business function, since the structure of modern enterprises often depends on the functions of the company;
• produce statistics on the statistical unit enterprise group.

In cooperation with the Member States, Eurostat is committed to continue working on the issue of variability in the application of the turnover thresholds used for the registration of companies in the various European business registers.

Any changes will be discussed further.

In collaboration with the Member States, Eurostat commits itself to continue working on the issue of variability in the application of turnover thresholds used for the businesses to be registered in the business registers across Europe.

Any eventual amendments will therefore be a matter for further discussion.