The Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development adopted the report by Petros KOKKALIS (The Left, EL) on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EC) No 138/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards regional economic accounts for agriculture.
As a reminder, the proposal to amend Regulation (EC) No 138/2004 setting up the economic accounts for agriculture (EAA) in the EU by providing for the methodology and time limits for the transmission of agricultural accounts. The regional economic accounts for agriculture (REAA) are a regional adaptation of the EAA. In addition to national figures, regional data help to better understand the diversity that exists between regions and complement the information for the EU, the euro area and individual Member States. The recognition of the role of regions and regional data in the implementation of the CAP, which represents an important driver for jobs and sustainable economic growth in the Union is increasing. The inclusion of regional data and the tools to achieve better data should be proportionate, taking into consideration the additional administrative workload for farmers.
The committee responsible recommended that the European Parliament's position adopted at first reading under the ordinary legislative procedure should amend the proposal as follows:
Transmission date
Members proposed that the first transmission of data for the regional economic accounts for agriculture at NUTS 2 level within the meaning of Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 shall take place by 30 September 2022 at the latest (as opposed to the 30 of June as proposed by the Commission).
Dissemination of statistics
The report called for the data transmitted to the Commission (Eurostat) to be actively disseminated by the Commission (Eurostat) online, free of charge, excluding confidential data. Members stressed that the Commission should apply the statistical principle of ‘cost effectiveness’ to minimise the burden on survey respondents.
The EU could provide grants to the national statistical institutes and other national authorities in order to cover the implementation costs of this Regulation when the setting up of regional accounts necessitates the thorough adaptation of data collection systems.
Economic accounts for agriculture
The report highlighted that collecting the same information more than once, thus creating redundancy in the data reporting, should be avoided. Details of the specific method and sources should be set out in full transparency in the quality reports, indicating which regional data have been
collected directly and which data are based on national data with regional breakdowns based on assumptions.