Commission Regulation (EC) No 1617/1999 of 23 July 1999 laying down detailed rules for the implementation of Council Regulation (EC) No 2494/95 - as regards minimum standards for the treatment of insurance in the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices and modifying Commission Regulation (EC) No 2214/96 (Text with EEA relevance)
Date: 1999-07-23
Institutions: European Commission
Subjects: consumer price, harmonisation of prices, insurance, price index

24. 7. 1999

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

L 192/9

COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 1617/1999

of 23 July 1999

laying down detailed rules for the implementation of Council Regulation (EC) No 2494/95 - as
regards minimum standards for the treatment of insurance in the Harmonized Index of Consumer
Prices and modifying Commission Regulation (EC) No 2214/96

(Text with EEA relevance)

THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES,

HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION:

Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European
Community,

Having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 2494/95 of 23
October 1995 concerning harmonised indices of consumer
price (1), and in particular Article 4 and Article 5(3) thereof,

After consulting the European Central Bank (2),

(1) Whereas, by virtue of Article 5(1)(b) of Regulation (EC)
No 2494/95, each Member State is required to produce
a Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) starting
with the index for January 1997;

(2) Whereas Commission Regulation (EC) No 1749/96 (3),
as last amended by Regulation (EC) No 1688/98 (4), sets
down an initial coverage for HICPs that is restricted to
those goods and services covered by all or most national
Consumer Price Indices (CPIs); whereas Council Regula-
tion (EC) No 1687/98 (5), amending Regulation (EC) No
1749/96, defines the coverage of the HICP as those
goods and services which are included in household
final monetary consumption expenditure; whereas insur-
ances are part of the coverage of the HICP;

(3) Whereas there is considerable scope for procedural
differences in the treatment of insurance in the HICP;
whereas a harmonised methodology for insurance is
necessary to ensure that the resulting HICPs meet the
comparability requirement of Article 4 of Regulation
(EC) No 2494/95; whereas, in practice, it is not possible
to observe the service charge for a particular insurance
policy on a monthly basis;

(4) Whereas the proposed treatment of insurance is consis-
tent with the definitions laid down in the European
System of Accounts (ESA) 1995 (6);

(5) Whereas the measures provided for in this Regulation
are in accordance with the opinion of the Statistical
Programme Committee (SPC),

(1) OJ L 257, 27.10.1995, p. 1.
(2) Opinion delivered on 23 June 1999 (not yet published in the Offi-

cial Journal).

(3) OJ L 229, 10.9.1996, p. 3.
(4) OJ L 214, 31.7.1998, p. 23.
(5) OJ L 214, 31.7.1998, p. 12.
(6) Council Regulation (EC) No 2223/96, OJ L 310, 30.11.1996. As

Article 1

Aim

insurance (7)

The aim of this Regulation is to set minimum standards for the
in the Harmonised Indices of
treatment of
Consumer Prices (HICPs) to ensure that they are reliable, rele-
vant and meet the comparability requirements as laid down in
Article 4 of Regulation (EC) No 2494/95.

Article 2

Definitions

For the purpose of this Regulation the terms given below are
defined as follows:

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

‘gross insurance premiums': the amount paid by the policy-
holder for a specific insurance policy to obtain insurance
cover;

‘claims': the amount which the insurance company pays to
the policyholder and other parties in settlement of injuries
or damage suffered by persons or goods;

‘premium supplements': the income earned by insurance
enterprises by investing their insurance technical provisions,
insurance premiums,
which comprise prepayments
provisions for outstanding claims, and provisions against
outstanding risks;

for

‘actuarial provisions': allocations by the insurance company
to technical provisions against outstanding risks;

‘service charge': gross insurance premiums plus premium
supplements minus claims minus changes in the actuarial
provisions.

Article 3

Treatment of insurance weights

1.
The weights for insurance shall be an estimate of the
aggregate expenditure by households on service charges for
insurance covered by the HICP expressed as a proportion of the
total expenditure on all goods and services covered. The
weights shall reflect the average aggregate expenditure during
three years.

defined in Regulation (EC) No 1687/98.

(7) As defined in Regulation (EC) No 1687/98.

L 192/10

EN

Official Journal of the European Communities

24. 7. 1999

Expenditure financed out of claims shall be treated as
2.
being incurred by the policy holder or other parties to the
claim and not by the insurance company. The weights of the
HICP sub-indices shall
include such expenditure where it is
incurred by or on behalf of the household sector.

Article 4

Treatment of insurance prices

The prices used in the HICP for the compilation of insur-

1.
ance-price indices shall be the gross insurance premiums.

The gross insurance premium shall be taken as the full
2.
premium that
is payable for the policy and shall not be
adjusted, even if the premium or the cover value of the policy
is index linked.

3.
Subject to paragraph 2, for each insurance policy in the
target sample the price-determining specifications shall be kept
constant. Where those specifications change, prices shall be
treated according to the rules applying to quality adjustment
laid down in Article 5 of (EC) No 1749/96.

Article 5

Comparability

HICPs constructed following the procedures described in
Articles 3 and 4 of this Regulation or following other proced-
ures which do not result in an index which differs systemati-
cally by more than one tenth of one percentage point on
average over one year against the previous year from an index

compiled following those procedures, shall be deemed compar-
able.

Article 6

Quality control

Member States shall provide the Commission (Eurostat) with
information on the procedures developed for the treatment of
insurances where these procedures differ from those specified
in Articles 3 and 4 of this Regulation, before such procedures
are used.

Member States shall provide the Commission (Eurostat), on its
request, with information on the procedures used for meeting
the requirement of minimum standards established in this
Regulation.

Article 7

Repeal

Footnote 1 of group 12.4A Insurance (S)
to
Commission Regulation (EC) No 2214/96 (1) shall be deleted.

in Annex II

Article 8

Entry into force

This Regulation shall enter
into force on the 20th day
following its publication in the Official Journal of the European
Communities.

This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.

Done at Brussels, 23 July 1999.

For the Commission

Yves-Thibault DE SILGUY

Member of the Commission

(1) OJ L 296, 21.11.1996, p. 8.