The 5th meeting of the European Statistical System Committee (ESSC) was held on 19-20 May 2010 in Luxembourg. Assoc. Prof. Mariana Kotzeva – BNSI President and Mrs. Veneta Petrova - Head of International Cooperation and European Projects division attended the forum.
On the first day of the meeting, Mrs Kotzeva had the opportunity to participate in the work of 2 ESSC strategic groups, i.e:
- Sponsorship Group on Communication: There, she presented the joint project between Bulgaria, Romania and Lithuania on developing Internet page with on-line catalogue of European statistical publications and access to them, and also developing tools for collection and dissemination of bibliographic information within the frames of ESS.
- Sponsorship measuring progress, well-being and sustainable development: This was the first plenary meeting of the Group and its work was chaired by Mr. Jean-Philippe Cotis – Director-General of INSEE. The final aim of the Group is to propose a strategy for defining priorities and implementing the 2009 recommendations of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress and the policy paper of EC “GDP and beyond: measuring progress in a changing world”. The work of the Group is closely connected with the preparation of DGINS conference in September in Sofia.
On 20 May, the ESSC took decisions on 4 comitology issues – Drafts Regulations within the field of education statistics, waste statistics and energy statistics.
A number of important issues, related to the future development of ESS were also discussed: Europe 2020 strategy and the tasks of statistics connected with its realization; joint strategy paper on the production method of EU statistics; ESS annual work programme 2011; plans of the Belgium Presidency for the second half of 2010.
The Agenda envisaged wide discussions on issues such as the forthcoming population and housing censuses conducted in the EU Member State in 2011, macroeconomic statistics, etc.
At the end of the meeting Mrs. Mariana Kotzeva made a presentation concerning the 96th DGINS conference in the end of September 2010 in Sofia, BNSI being the host of the forum, and acquainted the audience with the new Internet page of the conference.