Opinion of the Economic and Social Committee on the 'Proposal for a Council Regulation (EC, Euratom) amending Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 58/97 concerning structural business statistics` () (98/C 95/11)

On 6 October 1997, the Council decided to consult the Economic and Social Committee, under Article 198 of the Treaty establishing the European Community, on the above-mentioned proposal.

The Section for Economic, Financial and Monetary Questions, which was responsible for the preparatory work, adopted its opinion on 8 January 1998. The rapporteur was Mr Kenneth Walker.

At its 351st plenary session of 28 and 29 January 1998 (meeting of 28 January 1998) the Economic and Social Committee adopted the following opinion by 83 votes to three with two abstentions.

1. Introduction

1.1. The general purpose of the regulation is to require Member States to provide Eurostat with comparable and harmonized statistical data relating to the structure, activity, competitiveness and performance of businesses in the insurance sector at European level.

1.2. The Member States are responsible for the actual data collection and the methods finally applied. The regulation lays down the norms, standards and definitions necessary for compiling, transmitting and evaluating insurance statistics within the European Union. It is mainly based on existing EU legislation (such as Directive 91/674/EEC of 20 December 1991, Directive 92/49/EEC of 18 June 1992 and Directive 92/96/EEC of 10 November 1992) setting up measures to harmonize the annual and consolidated accounts of insurance undertakings or opening-up the Internal Market to direct life and non-life insurance. Many characteristics are also included in the enterprises' returns for supervisory purposes. Therefore in this regard, and also in respect of Article 6 of Regulation No 58/97, the draft regulation does not define the actual collection methods to be used.

1.3. All Member States are currently collecting statistics on the authorized population of insurance enterprises (based on the published accounts or the returns used for supervisory purposes). With the support of Member States, Eurostat started, in 1994, the collection of a voluntary base of mostly non-harmonized data on insurance enterprises. The draft regulation is largely based on the existing data circuits. It will entail the collection of a modest amount of additional data for a limited number of Member States only.

1.4. The Commission believes that a legal base is now required to ensure an improvement in both the quality and reliability of the insurance data to be collected, compiled and transmitted.

1.5. The Commission also feels that the step-by-step completion of the Internal Market in insurance services and the setting-up of the Internal Market Action Plan have significantly increased the need for reliable Community statistics on the sector.

2. The Commission's proposals

2.1. The Commission has three objectives.

2.2. Firstly, to establish a common framework for the collection, transmission and evaluation of Community statistics on the structure, activity and performance of the insurance services industry. The statistics to be compiled aim at improving the knowledge of the national, Community and international development of the insurance sector. This statistical system is intended to meet the information requirements of the Commission, Member State governments, the insurance industry itself (with its enterprises and clients) and a wide range of other users.

2.2.1. Secondly, to continue the strengthening of the development of the Community statistical system by incorporating into the production of insurance statistics the Community statistical tools such as the classification of activities (NACE Rev. 1 - Council Regulation No 761/93 of 24 March 1993) and the classification of products by activities (CPA Council Regulation No 3696/93 of 29 October 1993).

2.2.2. Thirdly, to provide flexibility to allow minor changes, notably to the list of indicators to be collected in the future (use of Council Decision 87/373 of 13 July 1987 on 'Comitology`). In the framework of the comitology procedure, as laid down in Article 13 of Regulation No 58/97, Article 12 of the same framework regulation [in its indent (i)] provides the flexibility, under certain conditions, to update the list of characteristics.

2.3. The draft regulation was submitted to the Insurance Committee in April 1996 and to the Statistical Programme Committee on 17 March 1997. Both committees support the legislation.

2.3.1. However, reservations have been expressed by some Member States concerning the extension of the reporting requirements being placed on the insurance businesses. Additional form-filling burdens on enterprises and processing burdens for the national administrations concerned would be unwelcome.

2.4. For the data to be collected (published data or data delivered within the framework of the financial supervision of insurance enterprises), the population of enterprises concerned is the total population. For the data which is not yet part of existing data collections and not available from other sources, Member States are free to use sampling techniques and methods of statistical inference, as laid down in Article 6 of Regulation No 58/97.

2.4.1. Where small and medium-sized enterprises are included in the sampling process, the possibility of not surveying those entities is open to Member States, who would then need to use statistical inference methods to compile the full list of variables for the population under review.

2.5. In the context of the ongoing cooperation with the European Monetary Institute, the Commission sees a requirement for the insurance services statistics in the larger framework of the statistics needed for Economic and Monetary Union.

3. General Comments

3.1. The ESC has constantly reiterated its support for all measures designed to improve the operation of the single market and remove the remaining obstacles to its completion. It acknowledges the progress which has been made in building a European single market in insurance services by the second generation of life and non-life insurance directives () at the beginning of the 1990s and the third generation of these directives (), which came into force on 1 July 1994.

3.2. The efficient monitoring of this market will require the existence of accurate, reliable, regular, timely, harmonized and comparable statistical data. It therefore supports in principle the Commission's present proposals.

3.3. However, the collection, compilation and transmission of this data imposes a double burden; firstly, on the enterprises which have to provide the raw data relating to their own activities and, secondly, on the national administrative authorities within each Member State, which are responsible for aggregating the data provided and transmitting it to Eurostat.

3.3.1. The ESC therefore shares the concerns that have been expressed that these burdens should not be unnecessarily increased.

3.3.2. As in all such cases, it is necessary to strike a balance between the needs of the information users and the burdens imposed on the information suppliers. Information, like any other commodity, must be cost-effective; in other words, the value of the information produced must exceed the cost of obtaining it.

3.3.3. For these reasons, the ESC considers that it would be advisable for this element of the statistical system to be made the subject of a project under the SLIM initiative.

3.4. The ESC considers it unlikely that the statistics produced would be of much benefit to insurance enterprises, their clients or other private-sector users because of the delay in publishing them. Typically, market-research information on the insurance sector generated by private-sector organisations is produced on a quarterly basis and is available within one month of the end of each quarter. National statistics are produced annually and, unavoidably, there is a further delay in compiling Eurostat returns. This would vitiate their viability for commercial usage. This does not, of course, mean that they are not important for macro-economic management.

3.5. True comparability of statistics is not attainable unless the insurance markets are also comparable. Subsisting differences between the nature and the operation of the insurance markets in different Member States are likely to make this difficult to achieve.

3.6. The ESC notes that Member States will be free to organize statistical surveys at their discretion and may elect to exempt SMEs from participation in these surveys, filling the data by the use of statistical inference methods. While it approves of the aim of thereby lightening the burden on SMEs, it would point out that differences in the way in which Member States choose to exercise this option could further undermine the comparability of the statistical information produced.

4. Conclusions

On balance, the ESC approves the Commission's proposal for a regulation, with the abovementioned reservations, but considers that it should be made the subject of a SLIM initiative project in order to determine whether the benefits are commensurate with the additional costs being imposed on enterprises and governmental administrations.

Brussels, 28 January 1998.

The President of the Economic and Social Committee

Tom JENKINS

() OJ C 310, 10.10.1997, p. 5.

() Council Directive of 8 November 1990 (90/619/EEC), life Council Directive of 22 June 1988 (88/357/EEC), non-life.

() Council Directive of 10 November 1992 (92/96/EEC), life Council Directive of 18 June 1992 (92/49/EEC), non-life.