Structural business statistics. Recast

The European Parliament adopted the resolution drafted by Elisa Ferreira (PES, Portugal) and made several amendments to the proposal concerning structural business statistics. The key amendments are as follows:

- a new part recital states that special attention should be paid to the impact on business caused by Community energy and environmental policies, such as Regulation 1907/200/EC . Cooperation and the exchange of best practices between national statistical institutes should be encouraged in order to ensure a more efficient use of administrative data sources;

- on comitology, Parliament felt that certain aspects of the legislation should be updated and amended in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny laid down in Article 5a of Decision 1999/468/EC. These include updating  the list of characteristics in the Annexes; establishing  the frequency of the compilation of the statistics, rules for submitting data as "contributions to European totals only" (CETO), the first reference year for the compilation of statistics and the breakdown of results and the classifications to be used and the combination of the size classes; updating  the periods of time for the transmission of data;  adapting the breakdown of activities and of products to amendments or revisions of the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE) and classification of products by activity (CPA);  adopting measures on the basis of the evaluation of pilot studies, and changing the lower limit of the reference population in Annex VIII;

- the scope of the Regulation must cover all market activities in Sections B to N and P to S of the statistical classification NACE Rev. 2;

- in order to limit the burden on businesses and the costs to the Member States, the size of the data collection will be restricted to a maximum of 20 enterprise characteristics or questions, to a maximum of 25 000 respondent enterprises across the Eu, and to a maximum average individual respondent input of 1.5 hours. Ad hoc data collection shall include a representative number of Member States. When only results at European level are needed, the Commission may set up a European sampling approach to ensure a minimum burden and costs. The Commission shall also specify the need for the information and the impact of the data collection on the burden on businesses and the costs to the Member States.

- a series of pilot studies shall be instituted by the Commission and carried out by Member States on a voluntary basis as specified in the Annexes;

- wherever feasible, appropriate administrative data shall be used to meet the reporting requirements of this Regulation.

- Parliament made some amendments to the time limits of the transmission of results as well as adding measures to minimise the burden on businesses and the costs to the national statistical authorities. It felt that this regulation must be fully compatible, in practical terms, with the ongoing revision of NACE, since it will come into force before NACE rev. 2. Compatibility between the two proposals (the present one and NACE Rev.2) entails the need to clarify the timeframe for implementation. The Commission proposal, which states 2006 as the initial implementation year was seen as outdated, and was replaced with the year following adoption of this legislation. Regulation 58/1997/EC would then continue to apply until that date.

- the first reference year for new variables is moved 2 years forward to 2008;

- amendments were made to the various Annexes, with particular emphasis on revising activity breakdowns for manufacturing, and information on sectoral requirements. Environmental data requires specific breakdown on compliance with the Kyoto Protocol.

Lastly, pilot studies should be carried out for clarification of concepts and comparability of labour market and productivity statistics.