COMMISSION REGULATION (EU) No 141/2013
of 19 February 2013
implementing Regulation (EC) No 1338/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council on Community statistics on public health and health and safety at work, as regards statistics based on the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS)
(Text with EEA relevance)
THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,
Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,
Having regard to Regulation (EC) No 1338/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 December 2008 on Community statistics on public health and health and safety at work (1), and in particular Article 9(1) thereof,
Whereas:
(1)
Regulation (EC) No 1338/2008 establishes a common framework for the systematic production of European statistics on public health and health and safety at work.
(2)
Pursuant to Article 9(1) of Regulation (EC) No 1338/2008, implementing measures are needed to specify the data and metadata to be provided on health status, health determinants and health care covered by Annex I to that Regulation and to set the reference periods and intervals for providing these data.
(3)
Those data represent a minimum statistical data set that should allow better monitoring of the Union’s health programmes and policies on social inclusion and social protection, health inequalities and healthy ageing.
(4)
Confidential data sent by Member States to the Commission (Eurostat) should be handled in accordance with the principle of statistical confidentiality as laid down in Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2009 on European statistics (2) and with Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 18 December 2000 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data by the Community institutions and bodies and on the free movement of such data (3).
(5)
A cost-benefit analysis has been carried out and evaluated in accordance with Article 6 of Regulation (EC) No 1338/2008. It has demonstrated that the availability of comparable Union-wide data is likely to be of great benefit for health and social policy decisions and for scientific purposes, with the use of common tools allowing data consistency across countries, even though the related costs would vary depending on the degree of integration of the requested variables and methodology within existing national surveys.
(6)
The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the European Statistical System Committee,
HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION:
Article 1
Scope
European statistics based on the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) shall concern health status, health care and health determinants as well as socio-demographic characteristics of the population aged 15 and over.
Article 2
Definitions
For the purpose of this Regulation, the following definitions shall apply:
1.
‘household’ means a person living alone or a group of people who live together in the same private dwelling and share expenditure, including the joint provision of the essentials of living; this definition does not cover collective households such as hospitals, care or residential homes, prisons, military barracks, religious institutions, boarding houses or hostels.
2.
‘usual residence’ means the place where a person normally spends the daily period of rest, regardless of temporary absences for purposes of recreation, holidays, visits to friends and relatives, business, medical treatment or religious pilgrimage or in default, the place of legal or registered residence.
Only the following persons shall be considered to be usual residents of the geographical area in question:
(a)
those who have lived in their place of usual residence for a continuous period of at least 12 months before the reference date; or
(b)
those who arrived in their place of usual residence in the 12 months before the reference date with the intention of staying there for at least one year.
Where the circumstances referred to in points (a) or (b) cannot be established, ‘usual residence’ shall mean the place of legal or registered residence.
3.
‘microdata’ means non-aggregated observations or measurements of characteristics of individual units.
4.
‘metadata’ means data defining and describing other data as well as statistical business processes.
Article 3
Data required
1. Each Member State shall provide to the Commission (Eurostat) the microdata set out in Annex I.
2. These microdata shall be based on nationally representative probability samples.
3. With a view to achieving a high level of harmonisation of the survey results across countries, the Commission (Eurostat), in close cooperation with Member States, shall propose methodological and practical recommendations and guidelines on sampling and the implementation of the survey in the form of a ‘European Health Interview Survey Manual’ including a model questionnaire.
4. The minimum effective sample size, calculated on the assumption of simple random sampling, is set out in Annex II. Weighting factors shall be calculated to take into account the units’ probability of selection, non-response and, as appropriate, adjustment of the sample to external data relating to the distribution of persons in the target population.
5. Small parts of the national territory amounting to no more than 2 % of the national population of respective Member States and the national territories listed in Annex III are excluded.
Article 4
Reference year and population
1. The reference year shall be 2013, 2014 or 2015.
2. The reference population shall be individuals aged 15 and over living in private households residing in the territory of the Member State concerned at the time of the data collection.
3. The collection of data shall be spread over at least three months including at least one month of the autumn season (September-December).
Article 5
Reference metadata
1. The quality-related reference metadata shall be provided according to the European Statistical System standard specified by the Commission (Eurostat) and agreed with the Member States.
2. Member States shall provide these metadata to the Commission (Eurostat) not later than two months after transmission of the microdata.
Article 6
Provision of microdata and reference metadata to the Commission (Eurostat)
1. Member States shall provide finalised, validated and weighted microdata and quality-related reference metadata required by this Regulation in accordance with an exchange standard specified by the Commission (Eurostat). Microdata and quality-related reference metadata shall be provided using the Single Entry Point services.
2. Microdata shall be made available at the latest by 30 September 2015 or nine months after the end of the national data collection period in cases where the survey is carried out beyond December 2014.
Article 7
Entry into force
This Regulation shall enter into force on the twentieth day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.
This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.
Done at Brussels, 19 February 2013.