IESS Agenda point 7.3 DSS Meeting 29 - 30 September 2014

What has changed since DSS Board? old Article 3 "Scope" removed - now covered by Articles 1 and 3 provisions on data collections divided among Articles 3, 4, 5, 6 and 10 provisions on Step 2 separated in Article 12 with title "Feasibility studies" to underline that this concerns possible future evolution in collaboration with Member States old Article 12 "Comparability" removed, provisions moved to Articles 6 and 12

What is not yet in the draft? the recitals "Whereas…." the definitions (Article 2) the sections in the annexes for the domains: health, consumption, time use, ICT the Explanatory Memorandum

Other things to note: the examples of delegated and implementing acts provided for the discussion are just to show how these could be constructed.

Issues: yes! Solutions: perhaps

Delegated acts (already discussed)

Implementing acts Issues generally these are accepted in EoV "no opinion" clause: another high-level institutional issue Solution issue of the ‘no opinion’ clause in the context of statistical legislation was however already extensively discussed and it has to be noted that all statistical basic acts that have been adopted, do not contain such a clause (the only exception concerns the Milk Directive in the Omnibus on Agriculture statistics)

Article 1 Subject matter Issues clarify that scope includes use of administrative sources Solution avoid redundancy - data sources already in Article 8 can use the recitals to underline that IESS covers data from administrative sources

Article 4 Multiannual rolling planning Issues some countries ask for planning to be adopted more than 24 months before start of field work Solution 24 months is in line with current practice for SILC >24 months reduces flexibility to respond to policy needs adoption of planning would take place after discussion in WG, so countries would already be aware of what is in the pipeline

Article 5 Elements common to several data collections Issues "list of common variables" - what happened to the core variables? Solution it was not intended here to refer explicitly to the lists of Core/Common variables as approved by DSS redraft Article to make it clearer

Article 6 Technical specifications of data collections Issues provision for harmonisation of instruments (eg questionnaires) Solution use of implementing acts gives Member States a strong role harmonisation of instruments is (sometimes) used in legal acts in other domains, so it has been accepted that it does not violate subsidiarity

Article 7 Standardisation Issues meaning of this article is not always clear to countries Solution this is a fairly standard article which provides a legal base to fix technical standards, for example, SDMX Data Structures for transmission of data to Eurostat has proved useful in other cases (ESA2010) use of implementing acts gives Member States a strong role

Article 8 Data sources Issues suggested to allow for the case of information provided by the respondent (eg self-administered questionnaires) Solution change (a) to "Information provided by the respondent" (as proposed by FI)

Article 11 Data quality Issues provision for Eurostat to assess quality: some countries want this to be limited to a subset of statistics used for European policy purposes Solution this article has been drafted using standard provisions found in several legal acts social statistics are necessary for European policy purposes use of implementing acts gives Member States a strong role

Article 13 Financing Issues some countries ask for provisions for wider financing eg "all new requirements" use more detailed text in Regulation 545/2014 (LFS) concern that article might be removed

Article 13 Financing (2) Solution while respecting the general principle that the EU does not finance normal statistical production, the text allows for funding the widest possible range of non-routine actions text from 545/2014 could be used in recital (as in that case) this article is not standard in statistical legal acts and has not yet been through full internal review

Areas of consensus principle of having a framework regulation coverage of IESS: inclusion of HBS and TUS is accepted by almost all Member States explicit opening to use of administrative data sources articles where implementing acts are proposed (apart from the “no opinion” clause issue): Articles 6, 7, 9, maybe 11 Article 13 on financing

Next steps (apart from delegated acts..!) redrafting to take account of comments from DSS provide missing parts of draft: recitals, definitions (Article 2), derogations (Article 16), repeal of existing regulations (Article 17) update and complete the annexes (nb ICT) Impact Assessment according to Commission rules (start October 2014, finish July 2015) next discussions: in DSS Board: 1-2 December 2014 in DSS: 25-26 February 2015 18