This is the fourth and the last ESSC meeting for the year. It is chaired by Eurostat and attended by the Heads of National Statistical Institutes of the EU Member States and representatives of ECB, OECD and EFTA countries.
The ESS Committee provides professional guidance to the ESS for developing, producing and disseminating European statistics in line with the statistical principles. The ESSC consults Eurostat on issues related to the coordination and priorities of the European statistical programme, further development of the European Statistics Code of Practice, reduction of response burden, statistical confidentiality, and issues of methodology, arising from the establishment and implementation of the statistical programmes.
The agenda of the ESSC meeting includes three comitology items: 1) Draft Commission Regulation on energy statistics as regards the implementation of annual statistics on energy consumption in households; 2) Draft Commission Regulation as regards the series of data to be produced for structural business statistics, and the criteria for evaluation of the quality of structural business statistics; 3) Draft Commission Regulation on structural business statistics, as regards the definitions of characteristics and the technical format for the transmission of data.
The items for opinion reflect the Strategic priorities for the Annual Work Programme 2015; the report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the final evaluation of the implementation of the Community Statistical Programme 2008-2012; methodology of the new round of ESS peer reviews; implementation of the recommendations of the Sponsorship on Quality; resources Directors' Group mandate; establishment of a Regional Committee for Europe under the UN Global Geospatial Information Management (UNGGIM), and interim results ofthe ESS action on “Merging statistics and geospatial information”.
At its first meeting the European Statistical Forum will discuss issues related to the strategic cooperation between the European Statistical System and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB), as well as the implementation of new international statistical standards.
The European Statistical Forum is a newly-created body, established by the Memorandum of Understanding, signed in April 2013 by ESS and ESCB members.
The Forum includes representatives from ESSC and ESCB Statistics Committee. Its aim is to further strengthen cooperation at strategic level in areas of shared responsibility of common interest, such as balance of payments, trade in services, national accounts and government finance statistics. In particular, the European Statistical Forum will be focused on priority setting, giving advice to the ESS and ESCB on the consistency of their respective statistical work programmes, and identifying possible future challenges for European statistics.
