Explanatory Memorandum to COM(2016)551 - Common framework for European statistics relating to persons and households, based on data at individual level collected from samples - Main contents
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This page contains a limited version of this dossier in the EU Monitor.
| dossier | COM(2016)551 - Common framework for European statistics relating to persons and households, based on data at individual level collected ... |
|---|---|
| source | COM(2016)551  |
| date | 24-08-2016 |
1. CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL
• Reasons for and objectives of the proposal
Contents
The objective of a highly competitive social market economy, delivering growth, better jobs, social progress and social fairness for all its citizens, is at the heart of the European Union policy agenda. In June 2015, the Five Presidents' Report on Completing Europe's Economic and Monetary Union 1 underlined the importance of building a strong social Europe. President Juncker, in his State of the Union speech of September 2015, conveyed this ambition emphasizing that we need to ‘recreate a process of convergence, both between Member States and within societies, with productivity, job creation and social fairness at its core.’
This goal is being forcefully pursued through the revamped European Semester, the annual cycle for the coordination of economic policies at EU level, in line with the October 2015 communication on steps towards completing EMU. A good balance between economic and social goals in the European Semester is particularly important for the sustainability and legitimacy of the Economic and Monetary Union. Hence, social and employment goals have become more prominent in the European Semester, with both country reports and country-specific recommendations assessing social and employment challenges and promoting policy reforms based on best practices.
The Commission has also proposed to develop a European Pillar of Social Rights 2 with the aim of promoting upwards convergence in employment and social conditions, as well as greater resilience to economic shocks. The Pillar should build on, and complement, the EU social 'acquis' in order to guide policies in a number of fields essential for well-functioning and fair labour markets and welfare systems. It should become the reference framework to screen the employment and social performance of participating Member States, to drive reforms at national level and, more specifically, to serve as a compass for the renewed process of convergence within the euro area. This should help ensure that economic development results in greater social progress and cohesion, in line with the Europe 2020 strategy and its inclusive growth objective.
This strong commitment to the EU’s social goals must be supported by a solid evidence base. Keeping also in mind that spending on social policies in a broad sense (including social protection, education and health) represents more than a quarter of GDP and more than half of public spending in most Member States, there must be a strong focus on policy outcomes, value for money and efforts to achieve better results through international comparisons, benchmarking and mutual learning.
The EU needs reliable and timely social statistics to monitor the social situation and the impact of economic developments and policies on social conditions in the Member States and their regions, and on the situation of different groups in the population. This necessitates that subjects such as poverty and social exclusion, inequalities, skills, access to employment for all, social protection expenditures, should be better described with sound and timely statistics.
The European Statistical System (ESS) 3 produces the statistical data used to assess Member States’ performance in the context of the European semester, to monitor the key targets of Europe 2020, to implement many Commission evaluation frameworks on employment and social developments, and to pave the way for a future strategic vision for Europe beyond Europe 2020. Over the years, the ESS has set up advanced tools to provide improved and comparable statistics for better policy making at the European level and in the Member States.
The ESS is increasingly confronted with a growing need for statistical information for analysis, research and policy-making. Furthermore, statistical data should continue to meet the high quality standards of official statistics, including timeliness.
Social statistics used at EU level are taken from a variety of sources: population censuses, aggregated administrative data, data from businesses and data on persons and households collected at individual level from samples. The current proposal relates to this last source of social statistical data.
The current system for producing European statistics on persons and households based on data at individual level collected from samples (hereinafter referred to as European social statistics collected from samples) is made up of a number of separate domain-specific Regulations, which specify the exact topics to be covered and the technical requirements for the data collection (e.g. sample size, quality criteria and transmission requirements). There are currently five legal bases for conducting European social surveys, which relate, respectively, to the Labour Force Survey (LFS) 4 , European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 5 , the Adult Education Survey (AES) 6 , the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) 7 , and the Survey on Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) usage in households (ICT-HH) 8 . Two European surveys are conducted on the basis of an informal agreement only: the Household Budget Survey (HBS) and the Harmonised European Time Use Survey (HETUS).
This initiative is part of the Regulatory Fitness and Performance Programme (REFIT) and aims to streamline the European social statistics collected from samples and to make the data collection process more efficient and the statistical output more relevant. The proposed Regulation should guarantee the comparability and coherence of the data in the long run. The system of European social surveys should be sufficiently robust and efficient, and should ensure that the high quality of statistics is maintained — which can be challenging given the continual change in this area of statistics: rapid innovation in methodologies and uses of IT, the availability of new data sources, changing needs and expectations of data users and continued pressure on available resources.
• Consistency with existing policy provisions in the policy area
It is becoming increasingly necessary for statistics to be reliable, timely and of high quality in order for policymakers, businesses and the general public to be able to take appropriate, evidence-based decisions. Providing statistics of this quality is, however, challenging for the ESS: the ever-increasing demand for data and the demand from respondents to statistical surveys to reduce the burden all combine to put pressure on the production of statistics. Recent statistical initiatives have, therefore, aimed to simplify and improve coordination and collaboration within the ESS, with a view to making the production of European statistics more efficient and reducing the burden on respondents. One example is Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics 9 , which was amended in 2015 to clarify the governance of the ESS and to strengthen means of coordination and collaboration at both EU and national level. Other initiatives, such as this proposal and the Framework regulation integrating business statistics (FRIBS), are included in the Commission’s REFIT initiative and aim to simplify and streamline the production of European statistics within targeted domains.
The European Statistical Programme 2013-2017 10 identifies statistics on ‘People’s Europe’ (i.e. social statistics) as one of the three pillars of the statistical information system: economic social and environmental. Each of the pillars covers a set of primary statistics that will provide the required input for policy indicators and accounting systems. In order to achieve the objectives of the European Statistical Programme in the most efficient and consistent manner, this Regulation establishes an overarching legal framework for the production of European social statistics collected from samples.
The ESS Vision 2020 11 aims to modernise the production of European statistics, and to thereby further improve the balance between the benefits and importance of having high quality European statistics and the costs and burden related to their production. In this way the ESS will contribute to adequately responding to the European institutions’ need for information for their policy-making and to the statistical needs of the broader society, while giving due consideration to the need to reduce the administrative burden on households and businesses.
• Consistency with other EU policies
Developing and evaluating policy in respect of the Union’s political priorities, in particular those relating to jobs, growth and investment, the digital single market, a deeper and fairer European Monetary Union (EMU), migration, internal market, energy union and climate requires good analytical and monitoring tools. Furthermore, the political priorities correspond to a number of different domains within social and economic statistics, making it necessary to ensure greater coherence between data sources and to facilitate increased use of new innovative sources and approaches. The Europe 2020 Strategy uses indicators to monitor headline targets, such as promoting employment, improving education levels and promoting social inclusion through the reduction of poverty. Calculating these indicators requires timely statistical information. This statistical information should be produced as efficiently as is possible using modern statistical data collection and production methods. The current lack of integration between domains makes it more difficult to analyse data coming from various existing data collections. The statistical requirements linked to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which addresses both poverty eradication and the economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, will also benefit from the more integrated and timely indicators resulting from this proposal.
The priorities that policies need to address may change and the need for high quality European social statistics is expected to increase even further in the future, for example, when work starts towards the objectives of the planned European Pillar of Social Rights. Moreover, high quality statistics are needed to allow policymakers to look beyond the current context, to identify and develop new policy frameworks and targets. The importance of European statistics is not limited to the time span of the current strategies. To take an example from the recent past: it was only possible to put in place the indicator-based targets for the Europe 2020 strategy because the European statistical base was rich enough to measure and monitor these targets. On this occasion, putting existing data to use for a new purpose showed the importance of developing and maintaining basic statistics that are flexible enough to be adapted quickly to new policy requirements.
Improving social statistics in line with the Union’s priorities and the stronger social dimension of the EU will require a strong commitment of the Member States and close coordination between policy makers and statisticians at all stages. It will be crucial that they maintain a sufficient investment in social statistics and provide the necessary political support, notably as far as access to administrative data is concerned.
2. LEGAL BASIS, SUBSIDIARITY AND PROPORTIONALITY
• Legal basis
Article 338 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) provides the legal basis for European statistics. Acting in accordance with the ordinary legislative procedure, the European Parliament and the Council adopt measures for the production of statistics where this is necessary for the Union to carry out its role. Article 338 sets out the requirements relating to the production of European statistics, stating that they must conform to standards of impartiality, reliability, objectivity, scientific independence, cost-effectiveness and statistical confidentiality.
• Subsidiarity (for non-exclusive competences)
The subsidiarity principle applies insofar as the proposal does not fall within the exclusive competence of the Union.
The ESS provides an infrastructure for statistical information. The system is designed to meet the needs of multiple users, for the purpose of decision-making in democratic societies.
The proposal for this Regulation has been drafted with a view to protecting the core activities of ESS partners while improving efficiency. and ensuring that unnecessary changes and duplication of work are avoided as far as possible.
The collection of statistics covered by the proposal currently takes place according to different rules at EU level. The proposal intends to streamline and modernise the collection of statistics under one framework. It is only possible to provide EU-wide, comparable statistics for policy purposes by acting at EU level.
One of the main criteria that the statistical data must meet is to be coherent and comparable. The Member States cannot achieve the necessary coherence and comparability without a clear European framework, i.e. Union legislation laying down the common statistical concepts, reporting formats and quality requirements.
The objective of the proposed action, namely streamlining European social statistics collected from samples, cannot be achieved satisfactorily by the Member States acting separately. Action can be taken more effectively at EU level, on the basis of a Union legal act ensuring the coherence and comparability of statistical information at EU level in the statistical domains covered by the proposed act. The data collection itself, meanwhile, can be carried out by the Member States.
The Union may therefore adopt measures in this area in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity as set out in Article 5 of the Treaty.
• Proportionality
The proposal complies with the proportionality principle, in view of the following:
It will ensure the quality and comparability of European social statistics collected from samples by applying the same principles across Member States. Similarly, it will ensure that European social statistics collected from samples remain relevant and are adapted to respond to users' needs. The Regulation will make the production of statistics more cost-effective while respecting the specificities of Member States’ systems.
Current EU legislation on statistics relating to persons and households has been constantly reviewed over recent years. It has become clear that a Regulation establishing a common framework for the process of collecting, processing and disseminating statistical data in these specific social domains could make this process more efficient (lower cost to benefit) and effective.
The Regulation is expected to reduce the financial and administrative burden placed on respondents, national, regional and local authorities, businesses and the general public. It will achieve this in particular by: standardising concepts and methods, removing duplications, reducing the frequency of data transmission in some areas, and making greater use of a combination of sources in addition to surveys.
In accordance with the principle of proportionality, the proposed Regulation confines itself to the minimum required to achieve its objective and does not go beyond what is necessary for that purpose.
• Choice of the instrument
Proposed instrument: a Regulation.
Given the objectives and content of the proposal, a Regulation is the most appropriate instrument.
The selection of the appropriate instrument depends on the aim to be achieved by the legislation. Given the need for comparable statistical information at European level, the trend in European statistics has been to use regulations rather than directives as the basic acts. A Regulation is preferable because it lays down the same law throughout the Union. It ensures the comparability of data within the EU, and thus allows high quality European statistics to be produced. It is directly applicable, which means that it does not need to be transposed into national law.
3. RESULTS OF EX POST EVALUATIONS, STAKEHOLDER CONSULTATIONS AND IMPACT ASSESSMENTS
• Ex post evaluations/fitness checks of existing legislation
As this initiative was launched prior to the adoption of the new Better Regulation guidelines (COM (2015)215), no full evaluation of the current system for the production of European social statistics collected from samples has been carried out. Based on Commission standards, Eurostat’s system for evaluating existing legislation, including the evaluation of the European Statistical Programme 12 was followed, and formed a central part of the whole process. In addition user surveys are conducted every year in order to obtain better knowledge about users, their needs and their satisfaction with the services provided by Eurostat. Evaluation results are used by Eurostat to improve the process of producing statistical information and its statistical output. They feed into various strategic plans, such as the work programme and the management plan.
• Stakeholder consultations
Three main groups of stakeholders were targeted for consultation:
• Data producers: this category comprises the authorities responsible for the collection and compilation of social statistics. It mainly includes the national statistical institutes (NSIs), at national level, and Eurostat, at EU level. In this context, the data producers are also the main representative of the primary data providers, i.e. households.
• Data providers: this category includes both respondents and national institutions that are the holders of administrative data files, such as the government social security and tax departments. The NSIs are also considered, in the broader sense, as a proxy for the primary data providers (i.e. households) given the difficulty of conducting interviews with individual households for the purposes of this consultation.
• Data users: within this group, a distinction can be made between institutional users (the Commission itself, national government departments, other international organisations and professional staff working at other EU institutions) and other external users, such as the general public, the media and academics.
Special mention should be made of one particular body that has been consulted as a data user: the European Statistical Advisory Committee (ESAC), established in 2008 by Decision No 234/2008/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council 13 . It has 24 members representing users, respondents and other stakeholders for whom European statistics are of relevance (including the scientific community, social partners and civil society), together with institutional users (e.g. the Council and the European Parliament). Under Article 8 of Regulation (EC) No 223/2009, the ESAC can be consulted during the process of preparing possible new legislation.
The consultation was carried out over the period from July to December 2015. The results are set out in three specific reports 14 .
The problems, as perceived by the consulted stakeholders, can be summarised as follows:
Data users are concerned about the risk of European official statistics not meeting their needs, i.e. not being relevant. Their worries stem from a number of issues relating to the quality of the data, such as the lack of coverage of emerging social issues, constrained timeliness and the limited comparability and coherence between statistical datasets.
Data producers (NSIs) are concerned about the high production costs and the pressure being put on them by the short deadlines set for providing the statistical information needed in the context of emerging social crises. The response burden is also an issue (as too large a burden risks causing response rates to fall, and thus data quality to deteriorate). The NSIs would like to have more support for their modernisation processes (e.g. innovation in technology, methodologies, the use of new data sources and management), the aim of which is to reduce production costs.
The solutions described by the stakeholders can be grouped into three main areas of action:
• making official European social statistics better able to be adapted to emerging information needs (i.e. improving their relevance);
• increasing the coherence and comparability of European social statistics, in order to ensure higher quality;
• using innovative approaches to reduce production costs and lessen the response burden.
• Collection and use of expertise
Eurostat has held extensive discussions on the proposal with the NSIs. It set up working groups (for each of the statistical data collections), task forces and directors’ groups, which met regularly to consult on the proposal. The proposal has also been presented to the European Statistical System Committee (ESSC) established by Regulation (EC) No 223/2009. The ESSC provides professional guidance to the ESS on developing, producing and disseminating European statistics. It is chaired by the Commission (Eurostat) and is composed of the representatives of NSIs. The European Economic Area (EEA) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries participate as observers. Observers from the European Central Bank (ECB), the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and other international organisations may also attend the ESSC’s meetings.
External views and expertise were also drawn from a number of additional sources:
The stakeholders' consultation described above included the views of data users and data providers.
The opinion of the ESAC was also sought, as an external source of expertise. The ESAC expressed its support for the proposal for a framework regulation for European statistics on persons and households. It considers a framework regulation as essential for supporting the Commission’s current, more extensive, agenda on social policy, and improving the integration and consistency of social data from across Europe 15 .
• Impact assessment
This proposal is accompanied by an impact assessment. This identifies the problems currently being faced, presents a number of policy options that could be used to address these problems, and assesses the social and economic impact of each of the options.
The Regulatory Scrutiny Board gave a positive opinion of the impact assessment in March 2016.
The impact assessment identified two main factors underlying the problems being faced in the area of European social statistics collected from samples:
the fragmentation of European social statistics collected from samples across different domains; and
the inflexibility of the methods used for collecting data on persons and households.
The following options were assessed as ways of addressing the fragmentation of European social statistics collected from samples.
| Option | Description |
| 1.0 Baseline: fragmented production processes, no legal integration | Keep current legal structure with domain-specific EU Regulations and fragmented processes (different guidelines, procedures and production processes) |
| 1.1 Defragmentation of production processes, no integration of existing legislation | Keep domain-specific EU Regulations, but pursue increased standardisation of the various production processes, definitions and variables (‘defragmentation’) across data collections |
| 1.2 Fragmented production processes (stovepipes), but integration of existing legislation | Integrate legislation on European social statistics collected from samples, without actively pursuing ‘defragmentation’ of production processes |
| 1.3 Defragmentation of production processes, and legal integration | Combine legal integration with defragmentation of production processes. This option has sub-options, characterised by their difference in scope and governance of the whole system |
| 1.3a Defragmentation of production processes, integration of existing legislation | Only includes the five current Regulations (LFS, SILC, AES, EHIS and ICT-HH) |
| 1.3b Defragmentation of production processes, integration of governance of European social statistics collected from samples | HBS/HETUS data collections also covered by the Regulation. Current differences between Member States suggest that substantial harmonisation is required |
The three options below were analysed as possible ways of addressing the inflexibility of data collection.
| Option | Description |
| 2.0 Baseline: programme and technicalities determined by legislation | Changes to programme or technical items require changes in the Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council |
| 2.1 Programming determined by legislation / flexible technical specifications | Statistical programming determined by Parliament and the Council, more flexibility in technical items |
| 2.2 Flexible programming / flexible technical specifications | Flexibility in statistical programming and technical items |
On the basis of the results of the impact assessment, policy options 1.3a (Consolidate existing Regulations, ‘defragment’ production processes) and 1.3b in the longer run (Integrate governance of European social statistics collected from samples, defragment production processes used for different data collections) were selected to address the fragmentation of European social statistics collected from samples. These policy options include the integration of the EU Regulations currently in place for different specific domains, and measures designed to create greater consistency in data production and handling. This approach would offer the best opportunities for being able to: make social statistics collected from samples more adaptable to changing users’ needs, improve their quality, increase the use of innovative methods, and reduce or limit the costs created by the current fragmented design of European social statistics collected from samples.
Depending on how the production methods are implemented at national level (e.g. whether technological and methodological innovations are adopted, whether there is improved access to administrative registers), the increased costs in the initial design phase of social surveys could be largely offset by the reduction in costs in the data collection phase, which represents two thirds of the total cost of statistical production.
• Regulatory fitness and simplification
The REFIT objective of the proposal is to make best possible use of the information provided by private households and persons, and to meet the current and future needs for European statistics while limiting the response burden. This simplification should be achieved by bringing the various European statistical data collections, which are currently covered by separate regulations, under one framework. Details of the reduction of costs for data producers and providers, calculated based on model scenarios, can be found in the impact assessment (Section 7.4 Impacts on efficiency and Annex 4 Analytical models used in preparing the impact assessment). The baseline hypothesis leads to an estimated increase in costs of €10.3 million in the design phase (at EU level), while leading to a decrease of €20.8 million in the data collection (net present value of €-10.4 million). Estimation of costs varied, however, between a net present value of €-3.1 million under the more contained hypothesis and a net present value of -34 million under the less restrictive option.
As the proposal concerns data collected from private households and persons, there is no impact on enterprises, including micro-enterprises and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The proposal is consistent with the Digital Check, as it promotes interoperability and reusability by making use of:
• The same technical specifications for data sets. The specifications will include: the number and description of variables; the statistical classifications; the characteristics of the statistical populations, the observation units and the respondents; the reference periods and dates; and the requirements relating to geographical coverage, sample features, technical aspects of the field work, editing and imputation, weighting, estimation and variance estimation.
• The same standards for transmitting exchanging and sharing information between Eurostat and the Member States. The standards will cover concepts, processes and products, including data and metadata.
Where the quality of data complies with the quality criteria defined in Article 12 i of Regulation (EC) No 223/2009, Member States should be able to provide data from several sources including methods or innovative approaches in so far as they ensure production of data that are comparable and compliant with the specific requirements laid down by the Regulation.
• Fundamental rights
The proposal has no consequences for the protection of fundamental rights. The most relevant considerations for this proposal are the possible effects on personal data protection (for which rights are laid down by Article 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, Article 16 TFEU and in secondary legislation 16 ). None of the selected policy options, however, envisages a change in provisions on personal data protection. National and EU legislation on statistics provides for NSIs to guarantee the protection of data. They have strong policies in place for, e.g. safeguarding respondent confidentiality, anonymising records and protecting replies to questionnaires.
4. BUDGETARY IMPLICATIONS
There is a phasing-in period for the implementation of the proposal lasting seven years, from 2019 to 2025, the programme should however continue afterwards. Only the years of the current Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF) have been considered in the legislative financial statement. The continuation of the funding will be conditional to the agreements reached for the next MFF and to the continuation of the specific programmes from which funding is foreseen.
For years 2019 and 2020, funding will come from the existing allocations to programmes and no additional funding is required.
The total appropriations for 2019 and 2020 are estimated at EUR 28.814 million. Detailed budgetary implications are set out in the legislative financial statement.
5. OTHER ELEMENTS
• Implementation plans and monitoring, evaluation and reporting arrangements
The proposed Regulation is expected to be adopted by the European Parliament and the Council in 2017 or 2018, with the adoption of implementing measures by the Commission to follow shortly afterwards.
Member States are expected to start data transmission to the Commission under the new Regulation in 2019.
The proposed legislative instrument will be subject to a complete evaluation, in order to assess, amongst other things, how effective and efficient it has been in terms of achieving the objectives and to decide on whether new measures or amendments are needed.
It is important to first consider the existing monitoring and evaluation tools that are currently in place, and apply to all areas of Eurostat’s statistical production. These tools already provide a means for analysing changes in the effectiveness and efficiency of the new statistical initiative and the quality of the data produced. The main tools are as follows:
• The current European Statistical programme provides for mid-term and final evaluations of the programme to be carried out systematically. Social statistics are an integral part of these reporting mechanisms. 17
• The Eurostat management plan provides for action to be taken in response to key performance indicators that apply to various areas including social statistics. 18
• User satisfaction surveys are carried out on a regular basis. 19
Each statistical domain is also monitored by means of quality reports, which are produced by Member States on a regular basis and analysed by Eurostat as part of the statistical quality assurance framework. These reports cover the quality of statistical outputs in terms of their relevance, accuracy and reliability, timeliness and punctuality, accessibility and clarity, coherence and comparability, as is set out in Regulation (EC) No 223/2009.
The cost of producing the statistics will also be monitored as part of the routine data collection. The following aspects will, in particular, be monitored in detail (at both individual and variable level): developments in the use of administrative data, the mode of data collection (e.g. web interview, face to face interview), the size of the sample, the length of questionnaires, the duration of interviews, and the frequency of data collection. This will allow the progress made in the use of specific techniques and the effect of these changes on the respondent burden to be measured. Furthermore, the variation in the cost of collecting social data at aggregated EU level will be used as an overall indicator for monitoring the implementation of the proposed legislation. This indicator will distinguish between the cost to NSIs of the design, collection and transmission of the data respectively. These figures are not directly comparable across Member States, due to obvious differences in their size, the approach they take to statistics and other developments. Over time, however, these indicators will be able to be used to track the development of the costs of producing European social statistics collected from samples, at EU level and for each individual Member State. These costs may be expressed in terms of the staff involved (e.g. the full-time equivalent number of interviewers working) or financial resources (e.g. the budget allocation for a given data collection). As such, these indicators provide crucial information for monitoring the cost of producing social statistics collected from samples, which is one of the main issues addressed by the proposed new legislation. An improved and harmonised framework for reporting costs, covering the whole ESS and distinguishing between the different statistical production phases, will need to be developed.
• Detailed explanation of the specific provisions of the proposal
The proposed Regulation consists of 19 Articles and five Annexes.
As set out in Article 1 ("Subject matter") the purpose of the Regulation is to establish a common framework for European statistics relating to persons and households, based on data at individual level collected from samples. Article 2 contains definitions of specific terms used in the Regulation.
The statistics covered by the Regulation are organised into the domains and topics listed in Article 3, and further detailed in Annex I of the proposed Regulation. It is proposed to empower the Commission to adopt delegated acts to amend the detailed topics listed in Annex I in order to adapt the data collected to future users’ needs. Furthermore, it is proposed to empower the Commission to adopt delegated acts establishing or adapting a multiannual rolling planning (Article 4) in order to meet specific users' requirements that result from technological, social and economic changes.
The Commission should also be empowered to adopt implementing measures on the technical specifications of the data sets (Article 6), the standards for transmission and exchange of information (Article 7), the characteristics of the sampling frames (Article 11) and the quality reporting (Article 12). The requirements relating to quality reporting are in accordance with Regulation (EC) No 223/2009, which provides a reference framework and requires Member States to comply with the statistical principles and quality criteria specified in that Regulation.
This proposal allows and promotes the use of new forms of data collection and of alternative data sources, including administrative data and estimates obtained from modelling and big data (Article 8). It also requires Member States to use high quality sampling frames (Article 11).
The proposal covers a number of other important aspects of the modernisation of European social statistics collected from samples:
– It introduces representative feasibility and pilot studies, in order to improve the quality of the statistics and support the development and implementation of new methods (Article 13).
– It includes provisions for financial support to be offered to Member States under certain conditions (Article 14).
– It includes provisions for derogations to be granted that would i) allow Member States more time to adapt to the new requirements, where needed and ii) allow some variation in how the common methods are applied, while still ensuring the quality and comparability of the statistics produced (Article 17).
In addition, the Regulation contains the required provisions on the exercise of the delegation of power (Article 15), specifying that it is in accordance with the Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Law-Making of 13 April 2016 20 .
The final Articles refer to the Committee procedure (Article 16) and to the repeal of two existing Regulations that will be replaced in full by the new Regulation (Article 18).
The five Annexes set out the detailed information on the topics to be covered, the precision requirements, the sample characteristics, the periodicity and the deadlines for the transmission of data.