Annexes to COM(2021)67 - Implementation of Regulation 295/2008 concerning structural business statistics

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dossier COM(2021)67 - Implementation of Regulation 295/2008 concerning structural business statistics.
document COM(2021)67 EN
date February 18, 2021
annexes of Eurostat's metadata 11 .

6.COMPLIANCE WITH THE SBS REGULATION

Member States’ compliance with the SBS Regulation in 2016 is assessed on the basis of the completeness of the data provided, the number of versions received before publication of the final data, and whether the data are provided within the deadlines.

The countries (EU-28, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) have been divided into four categories of compliance:

·VG    =    Very good compliance. All required data (with minor exceptions) were delivered on time (scores of 90 % or above).

·G    =    Good compliance. There were a few elements missing or minor delays in data delivery (scores between 70 and 89 %).

·P    =    Data were partially available but major sections of required information were missing or deadlines were not met (scores between 10 and 69 %).

·N    =    A large part of the data was missing or there were major delays in data delivery (scores of less than 10 %).


In general, compliance levels in most Member States are ‘good’ to ‘very good’. Twentyfive countries have a very good compliance level. A further 5 have a good compliance level and 1 country is partially compliant. In comparison to the reference year 2015, 12 countries have improved their overall compliance score and 11 countries had the same compliance score.

Eurostat regularly submits a compliance report to the SBS Working Group, with the objective of identifying aspects of the quality where a potential Member State needs to progress to achieve a maximum compliance with the SBS Regulation and to guarantee the coherence, relevance, timeliness, accessiblity and comparability of the data.

In addition, Eurostat has developed a data validation tool which Member States can use to check for accuracy and confidentiality before sending the data to Eurostat. The vast majority of the Member States uses this validation tool. The tool has helped to reduce the number of versions and improved the quality of the data transmitted by the Member States.

7.BURDEN ON BUSINESSES

Member States have continuously improved their data collection processes with the aim of reducing the burden on enterprises. Already in 2016, 26 out of 31 countries were using sample surveys combined with administrative data in data collection. For example, all larger enterprises - above an industry-specific employment threshold - were included in the survey in most countries, while smaller enterprises were selected as a part of a sample.

In many Member States there is a strong and growing focus on developing coherent and well-founded strategies so that administrative data sources can be fully exploited in the statistical processes. Statistical authorities are often involved in the design of administrative data in order to make administrative data more suitable for statistical purposes. In quite a number of cases, countries have used estimates or supplemented survey data with administrative data to produce the relevant SBS indicators.

8.CHANGES INTRODUCED AND ENVISAGED IMPROVEMENT OF SBS 

8.1.INTEGRATION OF SBS PRODUCTION WITH THE OTHER DOMAINS IN BUSINESS STATISTICS

Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 developed a cross-cutting legal framework on European business statistics 12 for their development, production and dissemination and replaced 10 legal acts that currently exist in the field of trade and business statistics, including Regulation (EC) No 295/2008, with effect from 1 January 2021.

It covers statistical requirements such as the structure, economic activities and performance of European businesses, their research, development and innovation activities and their ICT-usage, e-commerce presence and global value chains.

The adoption of Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 in 2019 was an important step towards a more integrated system of European business statistics. The legislative work still continues with the preparation of the necessary technical implementing and delegated acts .

The first preliminary SBS data to transmit following the new data requirements will occur in October 2022. For the SBS domain, Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 will bring about important changes 13 such as broader measurement of the economic sectors, better coverage of the service sector, better integrated data collection and data processing across sectors and domains, several simplifying measures for data requirements to reduce unnecessary statistical burden on respondents, and much better comparable, relevant, consistent and coherent data.

8.2.THE APPLICATION OF STATISTICAL UNIT ENTERPRISE IN SBS

In SBS, the statistical unit is the ‘enterprise’ as defined by Regulation (EC) No 696/93. However, implementation still differed between countries for reference year 2016.

An inaccurate identification of the statistical unit can cause a deviation from the objective of producing comparable and relevant statistical figures. In the context of ESS coherence and consistency, statistical information is not comparable in a statistical domain if different statistical units are used in different EU countries. Aware of this limitation, all Member States have commited to put in place national action plans to implement the enterprise definition for SBS by reference year 2018. In the meantime, Eurostat sponsored a multi-year project that produced a set of recommendations on how to proceed with this task.


(1) Regulation (EC) No 295/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2008 concerning structural business statistics (recast) (OJ L 97, 9.4.2008, p. 13).
(2) COM(2014) 243 final.
(3)

   Commission Regulation (EC) No 251/2009 of 11 March 2009 implementing and amending Regulation (EC) No 295/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards the series of data to be produced for structural business statistics and the adaptations necessary after the revision of the statistical classification of products by activity (CPA), OJ L 86, 31.3.2009, p. 170.

(4) Commission Regulation (EC) No 1893/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 December 2006 establishing the statistical classification of economic activities NACE Revision 2 and amending Council Regulation (EEC) No 3037/90 as well as certain EC Regulations on specific statistical domains, (OJ L 393, 30.12.2006, p.1).
(5) http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/structural-business-statistics/data/database (Available only in English, French and German).
(6) http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat (Available only in English, French and German).
(7) https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/sources/docoffic/official/reports/cohesion7/7cr.pdf
(8) https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/3217494/11348978/KS-HA-20-001-EN-N.pdf/f1ac43ea-cb38-3ffb-ce1f-f0255876b670 and online at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Eurostat_regional_yearbook
(9) In order to minimise the burden on businesses and the costs to the national statistical authorities, Member States may mark data for use as a ‘contribution to European totals only’ (CETO). Eurostat does not publish such data and they are not marked as ‘CETO’ when Member States publish them nationally. The use of the CETO flag depends on the Member State’s share of total added value in the business economy, as follows:Large countries: DE, FR, IT, UK;Medium countries: BE, DK, ES, GR, IE, NL, AT, PL, PT, FI, SE, NO; andSmall countries: BG, CZ, EE, HR, CY, LV, LT, LU, HU, MT, RO, SI, SK.
(10) https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/structural-business-statistics/overview  
(11) https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/cache/metadata/en/sbs_esms.htm  
(12) European business statistics, repealing 10 legal acts in the field of business statistics (
OJ L 327, 17.12.2019, p. 1). Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2019 on
(13) https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=European_business_statistics_manual_-_data_requirements#cite_note-1