Community statistics on migration and international protection

The Commission presents a report on the implementation of Regulation (EC) No 862/2007 on Community statistics on migration and international protection. The report documents the progress that has been made by Member States, together with the Commission (Eurostat), in implementing the Regulation since the second report in 2015 and outlines the next steps to further improve the quality of the statistics on migration and international protection.

General progress since the 2015 report: data availability and completeness has further improved across all data collections:

• there have been more improvements in the accuracy of data provided by the Member States, with further reductions in the amount of missing and incomplete data. However, specific accuracy issues remain, relating to both to under-coverage (i.e. persons do not register in their place of residence) and over-coverage (i.e. persons do not deregister, as there is often no obligation or incentive to do so);
• the punctuality of data has improved with the introduction of automated extraction procedures at national level;
• in terms of accessibility, the migration data (and metadata) are freely available on the Eurostat website, and Eurostat has given more information about the statistics, trends and their interpretation;
• data collections under the Regulation have undergone additional methodological and technical developments, leading to improved guidance for Member States.
• the quality of data received under the Regulation has also benefited from the entry into force of Regulation (EU) No 1260/2013 and related implementing measures. In response to the need to evaluate data quality more effectively, automatic data validation software has been introduced into data processing.

Comparability and coherence: the problems related to the application in Member States of the specifics of definitions for the migration and acquisition of citizenship statistics covered by Article 3 of the Regulation continue to be among the hardest to address. It is for these data that there are the greatest differences between national systems, because Member States use a variety of data sources. Efforts continue to overcome remaining problems. For example, two Member States were unable to use the 12-month criterion for defining emigration flows because a 6-month criterion for defining the immigration flows was used for some Member States of next residence. Where comparisons are possible, a high degree of coherence can be seen with data collected and published in other exercises and by national and international organisations.

Action required: the report notes that due to its structure, the Regulation can no longer properly respond to new user requests. Because of this, new data gaps identified by the Commission have been addressed by other data collection approaches such as voluntary data collections. Examples include first-time asylum applicants, types of return of irregular migrants and residence permits, broken down by age and sex and cross-classified with other breakdowns.

Other identified data gaps, such as 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, however, be addressed on a voluntary basis. Furthermore, some other policy needs that will have to be addressed in the future, in particular as regards residence permits data, such as the large number/share of valid residence permits reported as "other reasons" which prevents a full understanding of the nature of migration and meaningful comparison across Member States.

The Commission is taking the following action:

• proposal to amend Articles 4 to 7 (international protection and managed migration) of the Regulation in order to support the European Agenda on Migration. This initiative will strengthen quality by giving a legal basis to statistics currently collected on a voluntary basis. Amending Regulation (EC) No 862/2007 will provide statistics in those areas where the stakeholders have expressed clear needs: on returns (higher frequency and more mandatory disaggregations), resettlement, residence permits and children;
• promotion of the exchange of knowledge and good practices with a view to facilitating access to national administrative data in some Member States to improve migration data quality;
• in full respect of the purpose limitations, exploit the possibilities that will be offered by the future central repository for reporting and statistics that will be hosted by eu-LISA. This repository will contain anonymised data extracted from EURODAC, SIS, VIS and upcoming ETIAS and EES, which may be used in the production of European migration statistics with a view to eventually replacing parts of the current national data collections.

Lastly, the Commission notes that collection of data based on Directive (EU) 2016/801 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the conditions of entry and residence of third country nationals will begin in 2020, with 2019 as the reference year.