REGULATION OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL on European statistics on population and housing, amending Regulation (EC) No 862/2007 and repealing Regulations (EC) No 763/2008 and (EU) No 1260/2013

Introduction and background

Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, ensures the production of high-quality, comparable European statistics according to the statistical principles set out in Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics. The main uses of European statistics are to serve EU policy design, implementation and monitoring, and their main users are EU institutions. The European Statistical System is the partnership network between Eurostat and the national statistical institutes (NSIs). Eurostat’s role is to lead the way in the harmonisation of statistics, in close cooperation with national statistical authorities, which collect data and compile statistics for national and EU purposes.

Under Article 9 of the Treaty on European Union, every national of a Member State, in addition to the national citizenship, is also a citizen of the European Union. To design and implement policies and activities benefiting the EU population and citizens in the areas of EU competences, as established by Articles 2 and 3 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, EU institutions need complete, timely, reliable, detailed, harmonised and comparable European statistics on population. These statistics are also the backbone of all social statistics and indispensable for any more detailed annual population estimates, sample surveys, regional analysis and for producing population projections.

In the context of this initiative, European statistics on population (ESOP) comprise: (i) official European statistics on population, demographic events and migration; (ii) statistics from population and housing censuses; and (iii) the various indicators based on these statistics. These statistics are currently governed by three legal bases developed independently of each other:

-Regulation (EC) No 862/2007 on Community statistics on migration and international protection;

-Regulation (EC) No 763/2008 on population and housing censuses; and

-Regulation (EU) No 1260/2013 on European demographic statistics.

This impact assessment establishes and examines seven different policy options towards a Commission proposal for a new single modernised legal framework to meet evolving user needs for population statistics. Since this also entails potential opportunities for administrative simplification and process integration compared to the status quo under the three non-aligned legal bases, this initiative is included in the 2022 Commission work programme as a REFIT initiative. The impact assessment was carried out back-to-back with an evaluation of the current legal framework, as mentioned above. A single stakeholder consultation was carried out for the impact assessment and evaluation.

Problem definition

The evaluation concluded that the three Regulations led to significant improvements in European population statistics. However, there are several gaps and weaknesses in the statistics produced under the current framework.

The first problem with the existing legal framework is that the resulting statistics are not sufficiently complete, coherent and comparable, which may lead to sub-optimal decision making. This relates to key statistical definitions (in particular, the population base for the statistics) which are equivocal, causing poor coherence and comparability.

Secondly, availability of population data in terms of frequency and deadlines is insufficient, as the transmission of data on various important topics and breakdowns has remained voluntary. This is inefficient at EU level in the long term, as it fails to generate EU added value in terms of completeness, comparability and timeliness, despite the costs a majority of Member States incur in order to produce these statistics.

Thirdly, population statistics fail to capture characteristics and details of politically and societally relevant topics or groups. The current legal framework reflects the policy priorities current when the regulations were adopted, but lacks sufficient flexibility to enable the statistics to adapt to meet new priorities such as the EU Green Deal, increasingly dynamic population movements including EU and regional mobility, and equality and non-discrimination policies.

Finally, population statistics are also going through a period of major change, with many Member States moving to increased use of administrative data and other new sources. This potentially allows for statistics to be produced more frequently and in a more timely manner, and at a lower cost. However, it is not possible under the current legal framework to take advantage of such developments.

The evaluation has found that without legislative action, in the future these problems will persist or may worsen.

Objectives

The general goal of this EU action is to better respond to users’ needs, and to modernise and enhance the relevance, harmonisation and coherence of European population statistics. This goal can be broken down into four specific objectives aligned with the problems outlined above, namely to:

-ensure complete, coherent and comparable European population statistics;

-ensure timely and frequent statistics to meet users’ needs;