«SfiSPIPiPP 
COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES 
Brussels, 05.12.1997 
COM(97) 665 final 
ANNUAL REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE 
COUNCIL ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROGRAMME FOR 
RESTRUCTURING THE SYSTEM OF AGRICULTURAL SURVEYS 
IN GREECE 
1996 
(Article 5, Council Decision 85/360/EEC of 16 July 1985) 

I. INTRODUCTION 
1. The plan for restructuring agricultural statistics in Greece was adopted in 1985 
(Council Decision 85/360/EEC of 16 July 1985, as last amended by Council 
Decision 92/582/EEC of 14 December 1992) with the following aims: 
- to set up a technical and administrative structure at central, regional and 
provincial level, capable of running all operations connected with agricultural 
statistics in both the present and the future; 
- the improve the sampling frames, above all by compiling a register of farm 
holdings; 
- to install at central, regional and sub-regional level a computer system to input, 
check and process data; 
- to put into practice, on a progressive basis, the Community programme of 
agricultural surveys and statistics in order to provide the Community with the 
information it requires for implementing the CAP. 
2. As laid down in Article 5 of Council Decision 85/360/EEC, the Commission submits 
to the Council an annual progress report on the programme, setting out all the 
applications put into practice, the action taken and the measures adopted during 
1996 by the competent authorities (Statistical Office and Ministry of Agriculture) in 
order to complete the programme. 
II. PROGRESS MADE 
In 1996, the last year in which the programme was applied, the action taken to improve 
the system for collecting, processing and presenting data was completed. 
This year the emphasis was on improving the sampling frames by conducting a special 
micro-census to update the register (see Annex 1). 
The most serious problem encountered in the past few years was that of updating the 
register drawn up on the basis of the 1991 agricultural census. 
The initial solution was to update a central register for the whole country for use by 
remote users, with an on-line connection via the telephone network. This solution was 
not found to be satisfactory, since it does not guarantee the accuracy of the recorded data 
and is prone to the problems inherent in a public telephone system. 
The information-technology directorate therefore decided in 1996 to set up local registers 
to be maintained by the staff of the local statistical offices and used as a basis for 
updating the central register in Athens. 
ESYE (Greek National Statistical Institute) is able to confirm that all agricultural 
applications can both run and produce results at local level, wherever the methodology 
pemiits. The applications were designed according to the client/server approach of the 
LAN of the local office, which comprises two to eight workstations, depending on the 
capacity and requirements of the office concerned. It should be stressed that all 
applications are designed for processing at local level, so that they can be used 
immediately to supply local information as soon as the methodology allows. 
Given the continuous growth in the number of tasks, particularly of the staff of the local 
offices but also in the changes in the roles and objectives of the staff at the central office, 
the new system imposed new training requirements. We therefore drew up special 
courses to train and inform the staff dealing with agricultural statistics. These included 
continuing training and information for the staff supporting the geographical applications 
in the central and local offices, enabling them to specialise in the conduct and processing 
of agricultural surveys using modem methods. 
Large-scale seminars were organised in 1996 on the special survey for updating the 
register: inspectors from all prefectures first attended seminars at two training centres in 
Athens and Saloniki; they themselves then organised local seminars to inform the 
assistant inspectors and interviewers taking part in the survey. 
Finally, to complete the agricultural statistics restructuring programme and set up the new 
statistical information system, a major seminar entitled "Agricultural statistics in 
Greece and the EU - developments and prospects" was organised in Athens at the end 
of 1996 by the ESYE Secretariat General, the Ministry of Agriculture and Eurostat, and 
was attended by all employees involved in producing statistics in the central and local 
offices and the two organisations (the ESYE Secretariat General and the Ministry of 
Agriculture) and by users from various organisations in the agricultural policy domain, 
universities, research institutes etc. The aim was to make the new Greek agricultural 
statistics system known and to bring into contact those involved in producing statistics, 
enabling them to recognise their role within the production chain, express opinions and 
make proposals. Speakers from the Commission, the Member States and Greece dealt 
with the following subjects: 
• the CAP and the need for statistics; 
• agricultural statistics in the EU context; 
• Greek agricultural statistics and the need for a national strategy; 
• use of and prospects for the register of farm holdings. 
The aim was to make the participants aware of the equivalent systems in the Member 
States, the new requirements arising from the CAP and the future of agricultural statistics. 
This seminar also gave the various users an opportunity to get to know the results and 
capabilities of the new system and to exchange opinions and proposals, which will lay the 
foundations for permanent dialogue on the development and continuous improvement of 
the system. 
III. CONCLUSION 
The new system has proved to work very satisfactorily. It is a modem system of statistical 
information able to provide, on time and with a degree of reliability, the data needed to 
meet national and Community requirements in the agricultural sector. The demonstration 
carried out in Lamia showed it to be a flexible and open-ended system capable of meeting 
the requirements of the future. 
ANNEX 1 
L REGISTER OF FARM HOLDINGS 
The basic framework for the conduct of surveys is the register of agricultural holdings, 
drawn up from the 1991 agricultural and livestock census 1991, containing some 860 000 
holdings active in agriculture, stockrearing or both and exceeding a given area threshold or 
a number of head of stock. 
The design and management principles of the register are based on the procedure 
developed by Eurostat over the past few years to standardise the definitions, contents and 
management methodologies of registers and thus improve the comparability and quality of 
the data. 
The main principles on which the register is based are: 
. • precise and individualised recognition of farm holdings; 
• geographical referencing of holdings (address of the holding if it is a legal person or 
permanent address of the owner if he or she is a natural person); 
• information on the presence and size of certain holding characteristics; 
• capacity for individually recording and classifying farm holdings on the basis of 
characteristics. 
When selecting the variables for the register we took into account the need, in annual 
surveys inter alia, for predetermined variables for stratifying holdings for sampling 
purposes and the need to update the list of holdings to be included in the future agricultural 
census. 
The register is updated with the help of a mechanism for updating these variables, using 
data from internal and external sources. 
The most important internal source is the results of annual sample surveys of a certain 
percentage of the holdings in the register, investigating certain changes affecting the 
holdings (births, deaths, changes in size class) and the specific characteristics of each 
survey. 
External sources include administrative, sources such as the Ministry of Agriculture, the 
Ministry of the Economy etc. 
Updating from administrative sources presented problems. The connection between the 
registers was unsatisfactory because there was no «key» enabling holdings to be linked 
one-to-one. 
ESYE, which aims to keep a qualitative register guaranteeing the quality of the statistical 
information produced, conducted a special census in 1996 to update all the relevant 
variables for the whole of the register and to collect «key» information (identity card and 
tax registration numbers) to provide the necessary link with administrative data. 
2. SPECIAL SUR VEY FOR UPDA TING THE REGISTER 
The special survey to update the register was a census conducted in all municipalities in 
Greece from August to October 1996, based on the register of farm holdings drawn up 
from the 1991 census of agriculture and stockrearing. The data were collected by means of 
interviews with farm managers at their permanent residences. To locate new holdings we 
used the administrative registers and archives of agricultural directorates and cooperatives 
and various other organisations. This was made possible by the new Law No 2392/96 «on 
access to administrative sources and registers by the Secretariat General of the Greek 
National Statistical Institute (ESYE), on the statistical secrecy committee and on rules for 
the conduct of censuses and statistical work, etc. ». 
Great care was taken in* conducting the survey, the aim being to guarantee the quality of the 
data collected and achieve the desired result, i.e. an up-to date register and a quantitative 
framework for designing surveys. 
The action and measures taken to this end were as follows: 
- a pilot survey in 1995, the results of which were used to optimise the targeting of the 
1996 survey (micro-census); 
- questionnaire design ; 
- special information meetings were organised in the central and local offices at which 
oral and written instructions were given on how to complete and process the 
questionnaires; 
- a central working party was set up at ESYE and local working parties were set up in 
municipalities with over 1 000 habitants and a large number of farm holdings; 
- a major promotion campaign for the survey, using posters, information brochures and 
daily national television and radio broadcasts, ran throughout the survey period; 
- special programmes were designed for the processing and quality control of the data 
collected by survey at local and national level; 
- the survey was conducted and processed in accordance with the decentralised 
agricultural survey system. The data from the register of each prefecture were subjected 
to quality control at national level once the survey was complete. Lastly, the register 
was updated on the basis of these data. 
ANNEX 2 
TIMETABLE REMINDER 
The plan was initially to have been completed in five years (1986-1990), with geographical 
dissemination starting in Thrace-Macedonia in 1986 and finishing on the Island of Crete in 1990. 
Following two extensions granted to Greece by Council Decisions 90/386/EEC and 92/582/EEC, 
however, the deadline for completing the plan was put back to 1996. The new timetable is as 
follows: 
1986 
1987 
1988 
1989 
1990 
1991 
1992 
1993 
1994 first year 
second year 
third year 
fourth year 
fifth year 
sixth year 
seventh year 
eighth year 
ninth year 
1995 
1996 tenth year 
eleventh year Macedonia; 
Macedonia, Thrace, Thessaly, Epirus; 
Macedonia, Thrace, Thessaly, Epirus, Central Greece and 
Ionian Islands; 
Macedonia, Thrace, Thessaly, Epirus, Central Greece, 
Ionian Islands and Péloponnèse; 
Macedonia, Thrace, Thessaly, Epirus, Central Greece, 
Ionian Islands, Péloponnèse and Crete; 
Macedonia, Thrace, Thessaly, Epirus, Central Greece, 
Ionian Islands, Péloponnèse, Crete, Aegean Islands (North 
and South); 
First trial of the new system throughout Greece; 
Creation of a sampling frame based on the 1991 general 
agricultural census; 
Extension of remote sensing to the whole of mainland 
Greece and the Island of Crete; 
Synergies set up between the central and regional technical 
and administrative infrastructures installed by the Statistical 
Office and the Ministry of Agriculture respectively to 
manage the programme of surveys conducted by the 
Statistical Office; 
New system established throughout Greece; 
Monitoring and critical analysis of the results achieved 
during the first year of proper application. 
In November 1997 the Commission will submit to the Council a report on the implementation of 
the programme, including the results achieved. 
<f 
ANNEX 3 
1996 EXPENDITURE 
Ministry of the National Economy 
ESYE Secretariat General 
Expenditure category Amount paid 
GRD ECU Ministry of Agriculture 
1996 
commitments 
to be paid in 
1997 
GRD ECU 
I. INFRASTRUCTURE COSTS 
1. Development of computer system 
i) ESYE Secretariat General 
ii) Ministry of Agriculture 
2. Technical and scientific support 
i) ESYE Secretariat General 
ii) Ministry of Agriculture 
3. Miscellaneous expenditure 
i) ESYE Secretariat General 
ii) Ministry of Agriculture 629 906 908 
430 448 413 
329 719 674 
100 728 739 
25 000 000 
25 000 000 
174 458 495 
91 740 400 
82 178 095 2 078 983 181 465 160 
181 465 160 
181465 160 598 918 
II. EXPENDITURE ON STATISTICAL 
APPLICATIONS 
i) ESYE Secretariat General 
1. Animal surveys 
2. Wine-growing 
3. Fruit trees 
4. Cereals 
5. Special register-updating survey 
6. Restiucturing of agricultural statistics 
7. Annual survey of agriculture 
ii) Ministry of Agriculture 
1. Statistical applications 
2. Remote sensing 894 971 235 2 953 817 
757 396 624 
42 100 000 
13 000 000 
27 466 419 
16 000 000 
541 054 502 
8 259 747 
109 524 956 
137 574 611 
72 094 331 
65 480 280 73 707 020 243 267 
51 574 391 
51 574 391 
22 132 629 
22 132 629 
TOTAL 1524 878 143 5 032 800 255 172 180 842 185 
GRAND TOTAL 1 780 050 323 5 874 986 
1 ECU = 302,988 GRD 


9 
ISSN 0254-1475 
COM(97) 665 final 
DOCUMENTS 
EN 03 01 13 
Catalogue number : CB-CO-97-683-EN-C 
ISBN 92-78-28676-1 
Office for Official Publications of the European Communities 
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