Eurostat

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Eurostat
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Stadtteilzentrum Kirchberg, rue Alphonse Weicker - 2006.jpg
Directorate-General overview
TypeStatistical office
Headquarters Kirchberg District Centre, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
Directorate-General executive
Parent department European Commission

Eurostat, or the European Statistical Office (also DG ESTAT), is a Directorate-General of the European Commission, based in Luxembourg City. Eurostat's main responsibilities are to provide statistical information to the institutions of the European Union (EU) and to promote the harmonisation of statistical methods across its member states and candidates for accession as well as European Free Trade Area countries.

Contents

The partnership of Eurostat and the national organisations that cooperate with it is referred to as the European Statistical System, a term enshrined in EU legislation since 2009. [1]

Name

Eurostat was originally established in 1952 as the Statistical Service of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community, then upgraded in 1954 to Statistical Division of the HA-ECSC. [2] : 13  It became the Statistical Office of the European Communities in June 1959, often referred to by its French acronym OSCE (for Office Statistique des Communautés Européennes). [2] : 24  With the prospect of new member states making the handling of acronyms in multiple language increasingly onerous, the office decided in July 1972 to adopt the shorthand Eurostat in all its publications, with effect on 1 January 1973. [2] : 69 

As the European Communities became the European Union on 1 November 1993, Eurostat's formal name became Statistical Office of the European Union. [1] Since 1999, as all directorates-general of the European Commission were granted an abbreviated name, Eurostat has been referred to internally as DG ESTAT.[ citation needed ]

History

20th century

The need for a dedicated statistical capability was identified from the very start of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). At its 14th meeting on 1 October 1952, the High Authority (HA-ECSC) decided to create a Statistical Service as one of its 12 initial divisions and services. [2] : 13  By the end of 1952, the service had seven staff members including its head, German statistician Rolf Wagenführ  [ de ]. [2] : 14 

On 20 May 1958, Walter Hallstein, the first president of the newly created Commission of the European Economic Community (CEEC), announced that a Statistical Office would be established to serve the three European executive bodies, namely the HA-ECSC, the Euratom Commission, and the CEEC. [2] : 23  The Statistical Office of the European Communities (French acronym OSCE) was formally created on 11 June 1959 by joint decision of the three bodies and absorbed a separate statistical service that had been established in the meantime by Euratom in Brussels. [2] : 28  The OSCE remained led from Luxembourg by Wagenführ as its Director-General, but over two-thirds of its expanding staff was located in Brussels, [2] : 48  in various buildings with several relocations during the 1960s. Eventually, in 1968, after the three executive bodies had merged to form the Commission of the European Communities, Luxembourg became the location for most OSCE employees. [2] : 30  An "outstation" of ca. 15 staff, however, remained in Brussels in the Charlemagne building until it was significantly downsized in 1980. [2] : 59 

In 1968, the Statistical Office approved the initial version of the European System of Accounts (ESA), its core set of common standards for government financial and macroeconomic statistics. Given widely divergent prior practices, 1975 was the first year in which all member states reported using ESA, which underwent its first revision in 1979. [2] : 82  Meanwhile in 1974, the first domain in the statistical database Cronos databank was installed, marking Eurostat's entry into the digital era. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, Eurostat was plagued by a mix of bureaucratic conflicts and the broader challenges of European integration in that period (eurosclerosis), compounded by an inadequate legal framework for the sharing of confidential data. [2] : 95 

As with other aspects of European integration, the deterioration was largely reversed in the later 1980s under the Delors Commission. [2] : 118  A Commission regulation of 19 June 1989 established the Statistical Programme Committee, streamlining the process of managing the increasingly numerous workstreams involving Eurostat together with the member states' respective national statistical institutes. [2] : 126  At the same time, the status of the Statistical Programme was upgraded to a Council recommendation with dedicated budgetary resources. [2] : 128  In 1990, a new regulation on transmission of confidential data to Eurostat removed the longstanding obstacle to joint statistical work. [3] : 22  The Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community, known by its French acronym NACE (for nomenclature statistique des activités économiques), which had been adopted in 1969 to inform the OSCE's own work, was made compulsory in all member states by regulation adopted in October 1990. [2] : 129  On 25 February 1991, the Council of the European Communities established the Committee on Monetary, Financial and Balance-of-Payments Statistics (CMFB), thus laying a framework for the hitherto largely nonexistent cooperation between National Central Banks and Eurostat in the preparation of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). [2] : 127 

The CMFB established a workable division of labor between Eurostat and the European Monetary Institute then the European Central Bank (ECB): the latter was responsible for banking and monetary statistics; balance-of-payments and financial-accounts data was a shared area; national accounts and the price index remained under Eurostat. [2] : 142  A regulation to unify the measurement of inflation was adopted on 23 October 1995, establishing the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) as common reference. The establishment of EMU also gave unprecedented salience to the ESA as the basis for the calculation of the euro convergence criteria ("Maastricht criteria") and the Excessive Deficit Procedure under the Stability and Growth Pact. The ESA's legal status was upgraded to a Council Regulation, initially (EC) 2223/96 of 25 June 1996 known among statisticians as ESA-95, [2] : 140  replacing the previous ESA version from 1979. [4]

On 17 February 1997, the Council adopted regulation (EC) 322/97 known as the "Statistical Law", which further codified the member states' obligations, followed by a Commission decision of 21 April 1997 designating Eurostat as the sole Community authority entrusted with the production of statistics. [2] : 148-149  European statisticians started to refer to the combination of Eurostat and national statistical institutes as a "European Statistical System", even though the statistical law of 1997 stopped short of granting that term official status. [2] : 173  Later in 1997, the Treaty of Amsterdam (Article 213 A) included the first specific reference to statistics in the EU treaty framework. [2] : 139  ESA-95 was first fully implemented by member states in 1999, in time for the introduction of the euro. [2] : 141 

The dynamic expansion of Eurostat in the 1990s is reflected in the body's headcount, which, from just seven at the end of 1952, grew to 110 at end-1960, 220 at end-1970, 312 at end-1980, 388 at end-1990, and 639 at end-2000. [2] : 219 

21st century

Eurostat was rocked by controversy in 2003, as its use of temporary staff and outsourcing of some tasks to external organizations, which staff unions had questioned since at least 1996, came under scrutiny. [5] In response, the Prodi Commission in May 2003 removed three senior Eurostat officials from their posts, including longstanding Director-General Yves Franchet, [6] and a number of contracts with outside companies were cancelled. Eurostat appeared to have used a double accounting system to transfer money to bank accounts not monitored by auditors, and inflated the value of some contracts, with questionable spending amounting to around €5 million between 1996 and 2001. [7] No evidence was found of personal enrichment, however, and the malpractice was described as a response to onerous EU internal processes, [8] which former Commission president Jacques Santer suggested was ultimately a consequence of the member states' unwillingness to give the Commission adequate resources to execute its tasks. [5] €1.2 million was recovered in 2001. [9]

In 2004, controversy of a different nature erupted in Greece. Following a parliamentary election in March, a new center-right government under Kostas Karamanlis took over after 11 years of rule by the center-left PASOK party. The new government claimed that its predecessors had engaged in massive statistical fraud to facilitate Greece's adoption of the euro and the financing of the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, and produced a landmark financial audit exposing the extent of the malpractice. In response, the European Commission on 25 May 2005 issued a communication and recommendation on the independence, integrity and accountability of the national and Community statistical authorities, establishing a "Code of Practice on European Statistics", strengthening the audit capability of Eurostat to prevent a repeat of the Greek episode. [10] A peer review exercise followed, lasting until 2008. The next year, Regulation 223/2009 revised the EU Statistical Law first enacted in 1997 and incorporated the Code of Practice into it, thus giving it force of law throughout the EU. [11] : 28 

The effort to strengthen Eurostat, however, did not prevent an even broader Greek fiasco at the next change of government following the 2009 parliamentary election and the return to power of PASOK. Shortly after the election in October, new finance minister Giorgos Papakonstantinou revealed that the Karamanlis government, far from re-establishing sound Greek statistical processes, had dramatically underestimated its own government deficit figures. The revelations exposed an appalling lack of independence in the national statistical institute, the National Statistical Service of Greece, which Eurostat had been unable to mitigate. This triggered the Greek government-debt crisis, which in turn morphed into a much wider euro area crisis that was not resolved until the later 2010s.

Eurostat subsequently published a report to try to rectify its procedures. [12] The European Commission proposes powers for Eurostat to audit the books of national governments. [13] This led to the revision in 2011 of the European Statistics Code of Practice by the European Statistical System Committee. [14]

ESA 2010, which had been in the works since 2002, replaced ESA-95 in 2013. [3] : 35  It remains the reference framework to this day.

List of Directors-General

NameNationalityTerm
Rolf Wagenführ  [ de ]Flag of Germany.svg West Germany 1952–1966 [2] : 214 
Raymond Dumas Flag of France.svg France 1966–1973 [2] : 214 
Jacques Mayer Flag of France.svg France 1973–1977 [2] : 214 
Aage Dornonville de la Cour  [ da ]Flag of Denmark.svg Denmark 1977–1982 [2] : 214 
Pieter de Geus Flag of the Netherlands.svg Netherlands 1982–1984 [2] : 214 
Silvio Ronchetti Flag of Italy.svg Italy 1984–1987 [2] : 214 
Yves Franchet Flag of France.svg France 1987–2003 [6]
Michel Vanden Abeele Flag of Belgium (civil).svg Belgium 2003–2004 [15]
Günther Hanreich Flag of Austria.svg Austria 2004–2006 [16]
Hervé Carré Flag of France.svg France 2006–2008 [17]
Walter Radermacher Flag of Germany.svg Germany 2008–2016 [18]
Mariana Kotzeva (acting 2017–2018)Flag of Bulgaria.svg Bulgaria 2017–current [19]

Operations

European regions by GDP, expressed as a percentage of the EU average European regions by GDP in percentage of the EU average.png
European regions by GDP, expressed as a percentage of the EU average

Organisation

Eurostat operates pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 223/2009. [20] Since the swearing in of the von der Leyen Commission in December 2019, Eurostat is allocated to the portfolio of the European Commissioner for the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni. [21]

The Director-General of Eurostat is Mariana Kotzeva, former Deputy Director-General of Eurostat and President of the National Statistical Institute of Bulgaria. [22] [23]

Regulations

The Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 [20] of 11 March 2009 on European statistics establishes the legal framework for the European statistics. [24]

The amending Regulation (EU) 2015/759 [25] of 29 April 2015 clarifies that heads of NSIs coordinate national level activities for European statistics and decide on processes, methods, standards and procedures of their respective statistics. [24]

Previous Eurostat regulations were a Decision on Eurostat (2012/504/EU), and the earlier Decision on Eurostat (97/281/EC).

Statistical work

The Eurostat statistical work is structured into Themes and Sub-themes. [26]

General and regional statistics
Economy and finance
Population and social conditions
Industry, trade and services
Agriculture and fisheries
International trade
Transport
Environment and energy
Science, technology, digital society

General statistical activities

General statistical activities related to the European Statistical system are:

Geographical scope

EU data

Currently, and since Brexit on February the first 2020, Eurostat data are aggregated at the EU-27 level, known as EU-27. [27] [28] Before Brexit Eurostat data was aggregated at the EU-28 level, known as EU-28.

Since Brexit occurred on February the first 2020, data has to be computed for the EU-27 because by definition Brexit makes the UK a third country to the EU.

Nonetheless, to avoid confusion with the previous EU-27 group of 27 member states — which was used in the series of statistical data before the accession of member state number 28 — another name for the current EU 27 without the UK is defined as EU27_2019 in February 2019 and EU27_2020 since March 2020 according to Eurostat. [28] [29]

The name changed from EU27_2019 to EU27_2020 due to a British constitutional delay which resulted in Brexit being delivered in 2020 rather than the initially planned 2019.

The concept of the EU 28 has been used since 1 January 2014, also according to the Eurostat methodological manual on city statistics, 2017 edition.

Local data are also computed at the NUTS level.

Statistical cooperation in and around Europe

Eurostat is also engaged in cooperation with third countries through the European Statistical System, Enlargement Policy, and European Neighbourhood Policy. [30]

In 2021, European Statistical System includes 4 EFTA countries, that is 3 EEA countries and Switzerland. [31]

EU Enlargement Policy includes "candidate countries" in the process of joining the EU and other potential candidates. [31]

In 2021, European Neighbourhood Policy covers 16 countries such as 6 ENP-East countries — Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine — and 10 ENP-South countries — Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria and Tunisia. [31]

The trade and cooperation agreement between the European Union and the United Kingdom — since 1 January 2021 — includes a provision on statistical cooperation that foresees the establishment of a specific future arrangement. [31]

Access to Eurostat statistics

The most important statistics are made available via press releases. They are placed on the Eurostat website at 11:00 in the morning. This is also the time that the press release content may be distributed to the public by press agencies.

Eurostat disseminates its statistics free of charge via its Internet and its statistical databases that are accessible via the Internet. The statistics are hierarchically ordered in a navigation tree. Tables are distinguished from multi-dimensional datasets from which the statistics are extracted via an interactive tool.

In addition various printed publications are available either in electronic form free on the internet or in printed form via the EU Bookshop. Only larger publications are charged for as printed copies.

Since September 2009 Eurostat has pioneered a fully electronical way of publishing, Statistics Explained, [32] like Wikipedia based on Mediawiki open source software and with a largely similar structure and navigation. Statistics Explained is not only a dissemination format, however, but also a wiki working platform for producing flagship publications like the Eurostat Yearbook. [33]

Microdata, which in principle allows the identification of the statistical unit (e.g., a person in the labour force survey or a company for innovation statistics), is treated as strictly confidential. Under tight security procedures various anonymised datasets are provided to research institutions for validated research projects.

Locations

Initially located with the rest of the High Authority's staff on Place de Metz, the Statistical Service moved in 1953 to a separate office building in the Ville Haute at 29, rue Aldringen. In 1958, with its headcount having grown to more than 40 employees, the Statistical Division relocated to the former Hotel Staar near Luxembourg railway station. [2] : 16 

In 1968, with the relocation of many staff from Brussels, the Statistical Office moved again, while the derelict Staar hotel building was purchased by the Banque et Caisse d'Épargne de l'État and subsequently demolished. [34] The staff previously in the Staar building moved to the newly erected Tower Building in the Kirchberg neighborhood, while those previously in Brussels went to the previous building on rue Aldringen and the nearby building across rue Louvigny, above the then-branch of Banque Internationale à Luxembourg (later Dexia). All teams were then brought together in 1976-1977 into the Jean Monnet Building  [ fr ], erected in Kirchberg by the Luxembourg government for the Commission. [2] : 55-56 

Between September 1998 and February 1999, all Eurostat staff, which in the meantime had been again spread among several location in addition to the Monnet building, [2] : 155  moved into the Kirchberg District Centre complex in the northeast of the Kirchberg neighborhood, where the office space is known formally as the Joseph Bech Building. [35] Meanwhile, the Monnet building had become obsolete and was eventually demolished in the late 2010s, to be replaced by the Jean Monnet 2 building. It is planned that Eurostat will move into that building when ready, a move initially scheduled for 2023 [35] but subsequently delayed.

See also

References

  1. 1 2 "Our history". Eurostat. Retrieved 17 January 2026.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Alberto De Michelis & Alain Chantraine (2003), Memoirs of Eurostat: Fifty years serving Europe, European Communities
  3. 1 2 Andreas V. Georgiou (2018), A New Statistical System for the European Union (PDF), Brussels: Bruegel
  4. ↑ "European system of accounts ESA 1995". Eurostat. 24 November 1999.
  5. 1 2 Martin Banks (24 September 2003). "Member states must share blame for Eurostat fiasco, says Santer". European Voice.
  6. 1 2 David Cronin (22 May 2003). "Two transferred in Eurostat probe". European Voice.
  7. ↑ Thomas Fuller (26 September 2003). "Fraud cost Eurostat €5 million over 10 years, reports assert". International Herald Tribune.
  8. ↑ Andrew Osborn (9 July 2003). "EU officials 'siphoned millions'". The Guardian.
  9. ↑ "Q and A: Eurostat scandal". BBC News. BBC. 2003-09-27. Retrieved 2008-06-11.
  10. ↑ COM(2005) 217 final, Brussels: European Commission, 25 May 2005
  11. ↑ Miranda Xafa (September 2019), "A Statistician's Ordeal: The Case of Andreas Georgiou", World Economics (20:3)
  12. ↑ "Report on Greek Government Deficit and Debt Statistics". Eurostat. European Commission: 30. 8 January 2010. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 8, 2013. Retrieved 4 October 2024., 52010DC0001
  13. ↑ Castle, Stephen; Saltmarsh, Matthew (15 February 2010). "Greece Pressed to Take Action on Economic Woes". The New York Times . Retrieved 26 June 2019. ... the European Commission proposed powers for Eurostat to audit the books of national governments
  14. ↑ "European Statistics Code of Practice". eurostat. European Commission. 13 July 2010. Archived from the original on 20 May 2011. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
  15. ↑ "Vanden Abeele, Michel". European University Institute. Retrieved 17 January 2026.
  16. ↑ "Mourning Günther Hanreich". Eurostat. 7 September 2006.
  17. ↑ "Mr Hervé Carré, new Director-General of Eurostat". Eurostat. 7 September 2006.
  18. ↑ "Walter Radermacher". REPEC IDEAS. Retrieved 17 January 2026.
  19. ↑ "Mariana Kotzeva". United Nations World Data Forum. Retrieved 17 January 2026.
  20. 1 2 Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2009 on European statistics and repealing Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1101/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the transmission of data subject to statistical confidentiality to the Statistical Office of the European Communities, Council Regulation (EC) No 322/97 on Community Statistics, and Council Decision 89/382/EEC, Euratom establishing a Committee on the Statistical Programmes of the European Communities
  21. ↑ "Paolo Gentiloni". European Commission. 12 November 2019. Retrieved 30 March 2020.
  22. ↑ "Meet our acting director-general". europa.eu . European Commission. Archived from the original on 18 October 2017. Retrieved 4 February 2017.
  23. ↑ "Meet our Director-General". europa.eu . European Commission . Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  24. 1 2 "Eurostat and the European Statistical System - Statistics Explained". Eurostat. 26 April 2019. ISSN   2443-8219 . Retrieved 26 June 2019.
  25. ↑ Regulation (EU) 2015/759 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 29 April 2015 amending Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics
  26. ↑ "Browse statistics by theme - Eurostat". ec.europa.eu. Retrieved 2019-08-29.
  27. ↑ "Database - Eurostat".
  28. 1 2 "Brexit - Eurostat".
  29. ↑ European Commission. Statistical Office of the European Union (2017). Methodological manual on city statistics. Eurostat. p. 53. doi:10.2785/708009. ISBN   978-92-79-67746-5. ISSN   2315-0815.
  30. ↑ "Statistical cooperation in and around Europe". Eurostat. European Commission. 24 September 2018. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
  31. 1 2 3 4 "Statistical cooperation in and around Europe".
  32. ↑ "Statistics Explained". Epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu. 11 April 2017. Retrieved 18 October 2012.
  33. ↑ "Europe in figures - Eurostat yearbook 2010". Eurostat. 11 August 2011. Archived from the original on August 12, 2011. Retrieved 26 June 2019.
  34. ↑ "(Re)discover our city - Hôtel Staar". CityShopping. 23 November 2022.
  35. 1 2 Management Plan 2019 (PDF) (Report). Office for Infrastructure and Logistics in Luxembourg, European Commission. 19 December 2018. Ares(2018)6565888. Retrieved 28 January 2020.

49°38′00″N6°10′11″E / 49.633320°N 6.169780°E / 49.633320; 6.169780

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