PURPOSE: to establish a framework for aggregated European statistics on the inputs and outputs of agricultural activities, as well as on the intermediate use of these products in agriculture, their collection and industrial processing.
PROPOSED ACT: Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council.
ROLE OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT: the European Parliament decides in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure and on an equal footing with the Council.
BACKGROUND: the EU needs information on agriculture that is as accurate as possible and that enables it to develop policies that benefit all EU citizens and to allocate the substantial CAP budget in the most efficient way across multiple dimensions.
The proposal is part of the strategy for agricultural statistics for 2020 and beyond, a major programme to modernise European Union agricultural statistics undertaken by the European Commission in close cooperation with the EU Member States. In particular, the strategy aims to streamline and improve the European agricultural statistics system (EASS).
European statistics on agricultural inputs and outputs are currently collected, produced and disseminated on the basis of a number of legal acts. The proposed regulation should replace those legal acts for the purposes of harmonisation and comparability of information, and to ensure consistency and coordination across European agricultural statistics, facilitate the integration and streamlining of the corresponding statistical processes, and enable a more holistic approach.
The collection of statistical data, in particular on agricultural input and output, should aim, among other things, to inform the decision-making process with updated data to support the European Green Deal with the related ‘farm to fork’ and ‘biodiversity’ strategies and future CAP reforms.
IMPACT ASSESSMENT: the impact assessment concluded that the EASS should, as the preferred option, be covered by three regulations: two framework regulations concerning respectively Integrated Farm Statistics (IFS) and Statistics on Agricultural Input and Output (SAIO), as well as a revision of the Regulation on Economic Accounts for Agriculture (EAA).
CONTENT: the objective of the present proposal on statistics on agricultural input and output (SAIO) is to improve the quality, comparability and coherence of European agricultural statistics so that policymakers, businesses and the general public are able to take appropriate evidence-based decisions.
The proposed regulation requires Member States to provide statistics on four domains and twelve related themes. It covers agricultural production (crops and livestock), including organic farming, agricultural prices, nutrients and plant protection products.
To this end, the proposal:
- contains articles related on subject matter, definitions, statistical population and observation units, coverage, data transmission frequency, data sources and methods, reference periods, quality specifications, and potential financial contributions;
- provides the possibility of introducing specific ad hoc subjects related to agricultural input and output that supplement the data collected on a regular basis.
The detailed data sets will be specified in implementing acts (regulations).
BUDGETARY IMPACT: the financial impact of the proposal is of unlimited duration. The proposal does not include funding regular data collections, but it provides for Union co-funding of ad hoc data collections, the timing of which is not known.
The first ad hoc data collections should be expected at the earliest two years after the planned regulation enters into force. Once such ad-hoc data collections are required, the costs involved should be evaluated and further detailed along the drafting of the delegated and implementing acts and in any case should be covered by the appropriations allocated to the financial envelopes of relevant programmes included in the EU budget.