COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT Pursuant to the second subparagraph of Article 251 (2) of the EC-Treaty concerning the Common position of the Council with a view to adopting a European Parliament and Council Regulation concerning Community Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC)

2001/0293 (COD)

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT Pursuant to the second subparagraph of Article 251 (2) of the EC-Treaty concerning the Common position of the Council with a view to adopting a European Parliament and Council Regulation concerning Community Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC)

1. BACKGROUND

Date of transmission of the proposal to the Council and to the European Parliament (COM(2001) 754 final - 2001/0293(COD)): 13 December 2001

Date of opinion of the European Economic and Social Committee: 24 April 2002

Date of opinion of the European Parliament - first reading: 14 May 2002

Date of transmission of amended proposal on EU-SILC

produced by the Commission: 15 November 2002

Date of adoption of the Common position: 6 March 2003

2. OBJECTIVE OF THE COMMISSION PROPOSAL

Statistics on income and living conditions and, more precisely, indicators on poverty and social exclusion have been requested at high political level. Articles 136, 137 and 285 of the Treaty establishing the European Community refer to the necessity for Statistics on income, living conditions and social exclusion. Furthermore, the conclusions of the Lisbon (23-24/3/2000), Nice (7-9/12/2000), Stockholm (23-24/3/2001) and Laeken (14-15/12/2001) European Councils strongly supported the eradication of poverty and invited the Council and the Commission to promote a better understanding of social exclusion on the basis of commonly agreed indicators capable of measuring progress.

It is in this context that the Commission has developed the "Programme of Community action to encourage co-operation between Member States to combat social exclusion" to promote the "collection and dissemination of comparable statistics in Member States and at Community level". The European Commission's Communications COM(2000) 594, COM(2001) 619 and COM(2002) 551 on Structural Indicators follow the same direction.

For the period 1994-2001, the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) survey was used to meet these political needs. But in view of the need to update the content to match the new political demands, and of the request for operational improvement, i.e. mainly the timeliness of the produced data, the launching of the EU-SILC (Statistics on Income and Living Conditions) project was decided in June 2000.

3. COMMENTS ON THE COMMON POSITION

3.1. General

The Council has unanimously adopted the Common position and the Commission accepts it.

3.2. Decisions on the European Parliament amendments following the first reading

The EP Committee has been very supportive of the Draft Framework Regulation on the EU-SILC project. During its meeting in plenary session on 14 May 2002, the report was unanimously adopted with the introduction of 12 amendments. Those amendments generally go in the direction of making more explicit the kind of information to be included, i.e. more detailed information is asked to be included in appendix 1 of the Regulation.

Following the adoption of these amendments, the Commission produced on 15 November 2002 an amended proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning Community Statistics on Income and Living Conditions which incorporates the amendments numbered 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, 11 and 12. Amendments 2, 3, 7 and 10 have been incorporated with a slightly different formulation. Amendment 9 has been rejected as the Commission disagreed to include the parents' education.

3.3. Commission's position in relation to the European Parliament amendments adopted on 14 May 2002

The European Parliament adopted the twelve amendments on 14 May 2002. The proposed Common position of the Council incorporates most of them either directly or with some minor wording reformulation which makes no change to the content of the project.

Only two important differences can be noted in:

* The area 'Physical and social environment' where the Council refused to be more precise and to accept the coverage of crime, pollution and noise as proposed by the EP in amendment 7. At the level of variables, however, this information is included. The Commission would have preferred to specify crime, pollution and noise in the title of the area but understands the technical difficulties and can accept the Council's version.

* The education area, where the highest ISCED level attained is specified in the Common position but parents' education as proposed in EP amendment 9 is not included. The Commission supports the non-inclusion of parents' education on an annual basis in the SILC project given the technical difficulties in obtaining reliable information.

3.4. New provisions introduced by the Council and the Commission's position

(1) Several changes introduced by the Council are merely technical details and they can all be accepted by the Commission.

(2) Among the other changes introduced by the Council, the most important are the following:

* An additional aim of ensuring comparability of data, to be pursued through methodological studies has been introduced in Article 1.

* In the income definition (Article 2 (l) and 2(m)), it has been clarified that:

* both monetary and non-monetary income components are to be covered;

* deductions for "self-employed and unemployed compulsory social insurance contributions" are to be made;

* only "inter-household transfers received" should be used for the calculation of gross income and inter-household transfers paid have to be deducted from gross income to obtain disposable income.

* In Article 3, the words 'comparable and timely' have been deleted. The Commission would have preferred them to be kept but accepts the Council's version.

* In Article 4 (1), the Council has introduced the word "produced" in order to allow for the range of appropriate methods for Member States to compile or estimate the required data.

* The first year of production of data has been changed from 2003 to 2004, reflecting the earliest realistic date for implementation of the Regulation. Dates throughout the Regulation have been adapted to reflect this change. In particular, the date in Article 6(2) for the inclusion of the first target secondary area has been postponed to 2005.

* In Article 4 (2), a derogation for Germany, the Netherlands and the UK has been added allowing these three countries to launch SILC only in 2005 under the condition that they supply data for the cross-sectional indicators in the context of the open method of co-ordination.

* A new paragraph has been introduced in Article 8, allowing transition periods for Germany during which it moves to full use of probability sampling for both cross-sectional and longitudinal data.

* A new subparagraph has been introduced in Article 10, specifying that the dates of transmission of comparable data for cross-sectional common EU indicators will also apply to Member States which start annual collection of data after 2004.

* Article 12 is adjusted to reproduce the wording of Regulation (EC) No 831/2002 of 17 May 2002 regarding access to data for scientific purposes.

* A new paragraph is added in Article 12 to ensure that reports carried out by the scientific community are not released before Commission reports (reports based on cross-sectional micro-data for the year N should not be published before July of year N+2 and those based on longitudinal data should not be published before July N+3).

* According to the revised version of Article 13, funding for four years is guaranteed to all Member States, including those whose derogations allow them to begin collecting data later than others. The budget authority will actually grant the available appropriations, rather than simply determine them.

* In Article 15, the Council lays down a minimum period of twelve months, instead of nine, between the adoption of implementing measures and their application in the survey.

* According to the revised version of Article 16, an intermediate quality report is to be prepared by the Member States and synthesised by the Commission to complement the final quality reports, to ensure that appropriate progress is made towards achieving high-quality comparable indicators.

* The new Article 16 also establishes methodological studies, whose aim will be to evaluate the effect on comparability of the use of different data sources in different Member States.

* In annex 1, under Labour information, the Council has introduced an area of "Child care", since the availability or lack of child care facilities is felt to be a key factor in contributing to exclusion from the labour market.

* In annex 2, the sample sizes for Iceland and Norway have been added.

3.5. Problems of comitology encountered during the adoption of the Common position (and the position adopted by the Commission)

The Council has changed the comitology procedure from management to regulatory procedure.

4. CONCLUSION

The Commission agrees to all the changes proposed by the Council.