Analytics, EU – Baltic States, Modern EU, Statistics

The new regulation is part of a major Commission’s programme for modernisation of social statistics in the member states. It addresses the increased challenges in those areas of statistics, which include rapid innovation in methodologies and uses of IT, the availability of new data sources, emerging needs and expectations of data users as well as continued pressure on available resources.

It will also support the planned European Pillar of Social Rights which requires a solid evidence base in subjects such as inequalities, skills, access to employment for all and social protection expenditures - all of which should be better described with sound and timely statistics. This initiative is also 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.

Similar initiatives are being developed in other areas of statistics’ analysis, such as business and agricultural statistics.

Proposal’s advantages

The proposed framework regulation will allow data to be published faster, as it reduces the transmission deadlines in a number of areas. It will also increase the comparability and coherence of EU social statistics, by bringing together seven existing household surveys that are currently carried out in the EU and harmonising variables that are common to two or more surveys. This will, in addition, facilitate joint analysis of social phenomena, based on new survey methods. Finally, with the new statistics, the EU will have broader data thanks to the use of innovative approaches and methods by national statistical authorities and the combination of data from several sources.

Commissioner responsible for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, as well as for European statistics (Eurostat), Marianne Thyssen, said that the regulation draft has been an important step in modernising social statistics.

She underlined that “good policies start with good data”; hence the EU needs most accurate information in the social field in order to design social policies that correspond to the real citizens’ needs in Europe.

She stressed that the proposal makes a good example of how the Commission “puts the social dimension at the heart of EU agenda”.

Regulation to modernise EU statistics’ system

Seven household surveys are targeted with this framework Regulation: the Labour Force Survey (LFS), European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), the Adult Education Survey (AES), the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS), the Survey on Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) usage in households (ICT-HH), the Household Budget Survey (HBS) and the Harmonised European Time Use Survey (HETUS).

It should also be noted that this initiative will reduce the costs for the EU states involved in carrying out sample surveys and the burden on EU residents responding to them.

The Commission aims at gradually implementing the framework Regulation starting from 2019.

The Proposal is the result of extensive consultations with all interested parties: data producers, data providers and data users. The results of the consultation are summarised in an impact assessment publicly, see:

http://ec.europa.eu/smart-regulation/impact/ia_carried_out/cia_2016_en.htm

The European Statistical System (ESS) produces the statistical data used to assess EU states’ performance in the context of the European semester, to monitor the key targets of EU-2020 strategy, to implement many Commission evaluation frameworks on employment and social developments, and to pave the way for future EU’s strategic vision. Additionally, the Union's political priorities require good analytical and monitoring tools in the fields of jobs, growth and investment, the digital single market, a deeper and fairer European Monetary Union (EMU), migration, internal market, energy union and climate.

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 states. Nevertheless, 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 are covering a wide range of domains (demography, employment, income and consumption, well-being and quality of life, education, health etc.) and they are taken from a variety of sources (data on persons and households collected at individual level from samples, population censuses, aggregated administrative data and data from businesses). All these aspects are being analysed in a consistent manner under the modernisation programme for social statistics. The current proposed framework Regulation is an important step forward in the modernisation of social statistics notably in terms of social survey data.

More on the issue in the following links: = MEMO/16/2868; = Eurostat and = http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-16-2867_en.htm?locale=en

The Commission provided a detailed explanation of social statistics in so-called Q&A information; some main features follow below:  

= The main improvements in the draft compared with the current situation are dealing with significant improvements to the collection and analysis of social statistics in terms of:

•Timeliness: The regulation proposes a reduction in transmission deadlines in a number of areas (e.g. Labour Force Survey, EU-Survey on Income and Living Conditions). Combined with acceleration of data processing, this will lead to improved timeliness in the publication of data. For example, currently the data collected through the European Statistics on Income and Living Conditions is published in November of the year after its collection; thus results would be analysed and published 11 months faster.

•Comparability and coherence: The new draft will integrate 7 existing surveys. All common elements will be regulated under one single act, avoiding duplications and differences in implementation. In addition, increased harmonisation of technical items (e.g. definitions, variables, quality reporting) and wider use of administrative data will allow data linking between surveys. This will facilitate the analysis of the data coming from the different data sources, and will increase analytical possibilities. While fully respecting the confidentiality of the information, this will allow, for instance, better analysis of the relationship between income and health, including for children, young people and the elderly.

•Coverage: The draft allows for the use of innovative approaches and methods by national statistical authorities and the use of data from several sources, which means that the EU will have a broader data set, e.g. to be able to reuse the growing set of data on education, health, social security and social benefits that are already collected for administrative purposes.

= The draft will also impact the quality of the statistics: it will increase comparability and coherence of social statistics because it asks for the application of the same harmonised statistical methods and the same variables when they are common to two or more social surveys. This will also reduce errors during data treatment (editing, imputation, weighting) and increase accuracy of data. The Regulation will improve the relevance of the statistics produced, i.e. the extent to which the statistics meet current and potential needs of the users, because it facilitates the joint analysis of the surveys and enlarges the scope for research.

Besides, the publication of the data will be faster: the results would be analysed and published almost a year faster due to the reduction in transmission deadlines.

= The draft fits with the broader EU policy context through achieving a “social triple A” for Europe. This strong commitment to the EU’s social goals must be supported by a solid evidence base. 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 EU states, therefore 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 Regulation will support the development of the European Pillar of Social Rights by providing a solid evidence base in subjects such as inequalities, skills, access to employment for all and social protection expenditures.

Social statistics used at EU level are taken from a variety of sources: data on persons and households collected at individual level from samples (surveys), population censuses, aggregated administrative data and data from businesses. All these sources are being analysed in the ongoing programme for the modernisation of social statistics. The current draft is a first step in this modernisation process relating to surveys. The Regulation is expected to enter into force in 2019.

= The draft regulation is expected to yield significant cost savings. Although the initial redesign of the surveys will mean an increase in costs, this would be largely offset by the reduction in costs in the data collection phase (which represents two thirds of the total cost of statistical production) through the reduction in redundancies and overlaps between the different data collections and by re-use of production systems. The baseline hypothesis leads to a net saving of €10.4 million (an increase in costs of €10.3 million in the design phase at EU level and a decrease of €20.8 million in data collection over the first implementation of the surveys in the next seven years).

General reference: http://ec.europa.eu/priorities/deeper-and-fairer-economic-and-monetary-union/towards-european-pillar-social-rights_en