The European Parliament adopted by 512 votes to 54 with 676 abstentions a legislative resolution on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EU) No 99/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the European statistical programme 2013-17, by extending it to 2018-2020.
Parliament’s position adopted in first reading following the ordinary legislative procedure amended the Commission proposal as follows:
Reliable, comprehensive European statistics is an important public good: the amended text stressed that the availability of reliable, comprehensive European statistics benefits decision-makers, researchers and the public with the aim of providing accurate data to assist further integration processes in the Union.
Furthermore, high-quality statistics developed, produced and disseminated under the programme, in particular statistics on innovation, research and development, social statistics, environmental statistics as well as energy and transport statistics should allow the monitoring of objectives and targets of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.
The amendments underlined that the extension of the programme is an opportunity that should be taken to make adaptations and reflect the new orientations, in particular in line with the European Statistical System (ESS) Vision 2020, to complement the existing objectives, and the availability of data in a context where the Union is facing important challenges in terms of economic development and social cohesion.
Statistical infrastructure and objectives of the European statistical programme 2013-17: Parliament specified that the production of statistics should involve, inter alia:
- employment indicators distinguishing between part-time and full-time employment and between fixed-term contracts and permanent contracts, as well as indicators on unemployment that take into account people in activation policies such as training. These indicators should also include data on gender divides;
- providing statistical input for efficiently monitoring economic inequalities;
- statistics that enable better understanding of the economic, social and environmental effects of globalisation;
- the provision of data that allow for an analysis of the positive and negative consequences for the Union market, in particular the Union labour market;
- high-quality macroeconomic indicators in order to better understand and analyse economic fluctuations as well as to better understand and analyse the evolution of economic inequalities and their effects on society;
- the production of indicators on income, consumption and wealth distribution across households;
- the development of a framework for measuring quality of life;
- the development of indicators measuring environmental sustainability and external effects with a national account perspective;
- the measurement and analysis of gender inequality, including the wage gap;
- the development of a methodology for a voluntary survey on gender-based violence;
- the development of comprehensive indicators on the situation of migrants within the Union;
- the preparation and implementation of the agricultural census scheduled for 2020.
Statistics are also needed on the main areas of social policy such as: well-being; sustainability; social cohesion; poverty; inequalities; demographic challenges, depopulation, the labour market; education and training, learning mobility of young people, culture, safety, health, disability; consumption, technological innovation and new lifestyle choices etc.
European citizens should be able to draw easily and without obstacles on European statistics to enable them to use such data for their education and decision-making.
Implementation: the Commission shall adopt annual work programmes that shall set out the objectives pursued and the expected results. Each annual work programme shall be communicated to the European Parliament.
Report: by 31 December 2021, the Commission shall, after consulting the ESSC and the ESAC, submit a final evaluation report on the implementation of the programme to the European Parliament and to the Council. The report shall in particular evaluate: (i) the outcome of the reprioritisation and cost evaluation of statistical products; (ii) the progress on rendering access to official statistics easier and more user-friendly, including the provision of data on the Eurostat website; and (iii) the progress on the improvement of data availability, including on social economy activities and on the Europe 2020 indicators.