Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-10-22-Speech-1-198"
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".
Mr President, ladies and gentlemen, in 2005 the Commission, with the support of the Council and Parliament, embarked on a process to reform statistical governance in the European Union with the aim of strengthening the independence, integrity and responsibility of the national statistics institutes of all the Member States of the Union and, of course, of Eurostat, the European Statistical Office.
The first aspect of this process was the adoption in May 2005 of a European Statistics Code of Practice. Implementation of that code resulted in closer cooperation between Eurostat and the national statistics institutes and in improved reliability of statistical data gathered for many purposes; in particular, however, I would like to refer to one objective which has been the subject of debate here over the years, namely the excessive public deficit procedure.
When it proposed the Code of Practice, the Commission also recommended that the self-regulatory focus should be counter-balanced by the establishment of a reporting system to monitor adherence to the code. That gave rise to the idea of establishing an independent external advisory body to play an active role in monitoring implementation of the Code of Practice in the European statistical system as a whole.
At the same time the Commission noted that it was appropriate to review the operation and composition of the European Advisory Committee on Statistical Information in the Economic and Social Spheres, with the aim of making it more efficient and allowing it to play a more strategic role. The ECOFIN Council and, more generally, the national statistics authorities welcomed both recommendations and the Commission implemented them in a dual proposal in October last year; we are debating those proposals today with the prospect that, and I hope we will be able to confirm whether you agree with me here, they will be adopted at first reading.
To that end I would especially like to congratulate the two rapporteurs, Mrs Bowles and Mrs Van den Burg, on their work and the quality of their reports.
This process of strengthening European statistical governance is supplemented by a new Commission proposal adopted on 16 October, only a few days ago, to review the Regulation on the production of European statistics. That proposal is also subject to Council and Parliamentary approval under the codecision procedure and we will therefore have the opportunity to debate it again here in the coming months.
This set of initiatives will provide the Union with a modern, reliable, efficient European statistical system capable of improving public confidence in official statistical data. I refer once again to the debates we have often had in this House in recent years on the importance of reliable budget data, or reliable data for other national public accounts, GDP etc., or the need to have a price index upon which the public can fully rely.
As regards the reports we are debating tonight, allow me to point out simply that from our point of view it would have been preferable if there were greater respect for the institutional balance, as envisaged, in our view, in the initial proposal, in relation to the appointment of members of the European Statistical Governance Advisory Board and the drafting and transmission of that Board’s reports. In any event, the Commission acknowledges that the amendments to the original proposals are unquestionably important, they have the support of the Council and Parliament and they do not alter the substance of our original proposals.
In view of this, Mr President, before I close I would like to reiterate my thanks to the rapporteurs, and to the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs for their excellent work and for the continuous support for the Commission’s work to modernise our statistical system and make it more reliable and more robust."@en1
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