COMMISSION IMPLEMENTING DECISION (EU) 2018/1891

of 30 November 2018

amending Implementing Decision 2014/403/EU on granting derogations to Member States with respect to the transmission of statistics pursuant to Regulation (EU) No 549/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the European system of national and regional accounts in the European Union

(notified under document C(2018) 7943)

(Only the Bulgarian, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish and Swedish texts are authentic)

(Text with EEA relevance)

THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,

Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,

Having regard to Regulation (EU) No 549/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 May 2013 on the European system of national and regional accounts in the European Union (1), and in particular Article 6(1),

Having regard to Commission Implementing Decision 2014/403/EU of 26 June 2014 on granting derogations to Member States with respect to the transmission of statistics pursuant to Regulation (EU) No 549/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the European system of national and regional accounts in the European Union (2),

Whereas:

(1) Pursuant to Article 6(1) of Regulation (EU) No 549/2013 Implementing Decision 2014/403/EU granted temporary derogations to Member States on the basis of requests justified by the need for major adaptations to national administrative and statistical systems in order to fully comply with that Regulation.

(2) Pursuant to Article 6(3) of Regulation (EU) No 549/2013, the Commission checked the justifications for the granted derogations, consulted the European Statistical System Committee and adopted a report on the application of the granted derogations (3).

(3) In accordance with that report, the availability of data under Regulation (EU) No 549/2013 has improved and most Member States have adapted its national administrative and statistical systems and have started providing all or some of the data covered by derogations even before the first transmission date.

(4) Of the 365 derogations expiring in 2018, 2019 or 2020, 244 derogations (67 %) have valid justifications and should remain unchanged, 98 derogations (27 %) should be withdrawn since they no longer have any valid justifications, and the scope of 23 derogations (6 %) should be narrowed since their justifications are only partially valid.

(5) Implementing Decision 2014/403/EU should therefore be amended accordingly.

(6) The measures provided for in this Decision are in accordance with the opinion of the European Statistical System Committee,

HAS ADOPTED THIS DECISION:

Article 1 The Annex to Implementing Decision 2014/403/EU is replaced by the text set out in the Annex to this Implementing Decision.

Article 2 This Decision is addressed to the Kingdom of Belgium, the Republic of Bulgaria, the Kingdom of Denmark, the Federal Republic of Germany, the Republic of Estonia, Ireland, the Hellenic Republic, the Kingdom of Spain, the French Republic, the Republic of Croatia, the Italian Republic, the Republic of Cyprus, the Republic of Latvia, the Republic of Lithuania, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, Hungary, the Republic of Malta, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Republic of Austria, the Republic of Poland, the Portuguese Republic, Romania, the Republic of Slovenia, the Slovak Republic, the Republic of Finland, the Kingdom of Sweden, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

Article 3 This Decision shall enter into force on the twentieth day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.

Done at Brussels, 30 November 2018. For the Commission Marianne THYSSEN Member of the Commission

(1) OJ L 174, 26.6.2013, p. 1.

(2) OJ L 195, 2.7.2014, p. 1.

(3) Report from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the application of Regulation (EU) No 549/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 May 2013 on the European System of national and regional accounts in the European Union and on the application of the granted derogations, COM(2018)506.