The NSI President Reneta Indjova, Ph.D. will participate in the 16th meeting of the European Statistical System Committee (ESSC), which will be held in the premises of Eurostat in Luxembourg on 7 February 2013. This is the first out of four ESSC meetings for the calendar year, chaired by Eurostat and attended by the Heads of National Statistical Offices of the Member States and representatives of EFTA countries, ECB and OECD.
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.
According to the agenda, ESSC will decide on one comitology item - Draft Commission Regulation as regards access to confidential data for scientific purposes. The items for opinion are related to common ESS conditions for access to and re-use of data; draft proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Council Regulation (EC) No 577/98 on the organisation of a labour force sample survey in the Community; proposal for Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EC) No 691/2011 on European environmental economic accounts; cooperation between the ESS and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB), as well as the Macroeconomic Imbalances Procedure (MIP).
Further discussions will be held with focus on the report of the Partnership Group and the report of the Business Statistics Directors Group. In addition, the report of the Presidency (Ireland) and a strategy for statistical cooperation between the ESS and the enlargement and ENP countries, and the rest of the world will be considered.
During the meeting the agenda of the 44th session of the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC), to be held at the United Nations Headquarters, New York, in the period 26 February – 1 March 2013, will be presented to the ESSC. As of this year Bulgaria is a member of UNSC.