Mr. Tsvetarsky made an overview of the main results of the Bulgarian Presidency’s work on the legislative proposals in the field of statistics with a focus on the last tripartite negotiations with the European Parliament and the European Commission and the possible next steps for making progress on the open files.
Dr. Konrad Pesendorfer presented the plans, the priorities and the team of the Austrian Presidency, which will run from 1 July to 31 December 2018.
The meeting was also attended by NSI Deputy President Ms. Diana Yancheva, Statistics Estonia Deputy Director General Ms. Tuulikki Sillajõe, experts from the three countries and a representative of the European Union’s statistical office Eurostat.
The final assessment of the Bulgarian Presidency shows that out of the five legislative proposals that were inherited from the Estonian Presidency at the beginning of the year, one was closed, whereas significant or good progress was achieved on the remaining four.
In particular, Regulation (EU) 2018/643 of the European Parliament and of the Council on rail transport statistics (recast) was adopted and published in the Official Journal of the European Union on 2 May 2018.
A trilateral agreement was reached with the Parliament and the Commission on the Integrated Farm Statistics (IFS) proposal. The agreement was approved by COREPER, and the EP plenary is to vote on it at the beginning of July this year.
Preliminary tripartite agreements were also reached on the proposal for Integrated European Social Statistics (IESS) and on the GNI Regulation.
The Bulgarian Presidency opened discussions on the proposal for a Framework Regulation Integrating Business Statistics (FRIBS) within the Council Working Party and reached a provisional agreement between the Member States on a substantial part of the articles.
In total, six meetings of the Council Working Party on Statistics were held during the Bulgarian Presidency, as well as eight trilogues and nine technical meetings at which IESS, IFS and the GNI Regulation were discussed. In addition, Bulgaria hosted a technical meeting of the Trio Presidency of the Council of the EU Estonia – Bulgaria – Austria and an informal workshop of the Directors General of the Member States’ National Statistical Institutes on the next round of peer reviews.
