REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on the implementation of the Regulation (EC) No 295/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning structural business statistics
Date: 2017-08-08
Institutions: European Commission, Eurostat
Subjects: EU statistics, branch of activity, confidentiality, data collection, economic statistics, statistical method

EN 

   EN 

   EUROPEAN COMMISSION  Brussels, 8.8.2017  COM(2017) 419 final   REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on the implementation of the Regulation (EC) No 295/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning structural business statistics  
 
 
CONTENTS 

1. 

1.1. 

1.2. 

1.3. 

1.4. 

2. 

2.1. 

2.2. 

2.3. 

3. 

4. 

4.1. 

4.2. 

5. 

6. 

7. 

8. 

8.1. 

8.2. 

9. 

INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................ 3 

Regulation on structural business statistics .................................................................. 3 

Content of the main datasets ........................................................................................ 3 

Accessibility of SBS .................................................................................................... 5 

Publications in 2015 and 2016 ..................................................................................... 5 

EFFECTIVENESS OF THE REGULATION AND RELEVANCE OF DATASETS 5 

Availability and completeness of data ......................................................................... 5 

Confidentiality rules and their implementation............................................................ 7 

Usefulness of SBS ........................................................................................................ 8 

ACCURACY................................................................................................................ 9 

COHERENCE AND COMPARABILITY ................................................................ 10 

Coherence ................................................................................................................... 10 

Comparability ............................................................................................................. 10 

DEADLINES FOR SUPPLYING DATA ................................................................. 10 

ACCESSIBILITY AND CLARITY .......................................................................... 11 

COMPLIANCE WITH THE SBS REGULATION ................................................... 11 

THE BURDEN ON BUSINESSES AND CHANGES INTRODUCED AND 
ENVISAGED IN SBS................................................................................................ 13 

Background ................................................................................................................ 13 

Changes introduced and envisaged in SBS ................................................................ 13 

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT ................................................................................... 15 

2 

 
 
 
 
 
1. 

INTRODUCTION 

1.1. 

Regulation on structural business statistics 

Under  Article  13(1)  of  Regulation  (EC)  No 295/20081  on  structural  business  statistics  (‘the 

SBS Regulation’), ‘the Commission shall, by 29 April 2011 and every three years thereafter, 

submit  a  report  to  the  European  Parliament  and  the  Council  on  the  statistics  compiled 

pursuant to this Regulation and in particular on their quality and the burden on business’. This 

report follows on from the April 2014 report.2 

It provides an overview of progress in implementing the SBS Regulation based on final data 

for the reference year 2013 in the following areas: 

  services; 

  industry; 

  trade; 

  construction; 

  business services; and 

  business demography. 

It provides information on the measures the Commission has taken to ensure that high-quality 

European structural business statistics are made available, and on the  implementation of the 

SBS Regulation by Member States. It also includes information on the measures Eurostat has 

put  in  place  to  make  structural  business  statistics  more  relevant  and  reduce  the  burden  of 

compiling them for businesses. 

1.2. 

Content of the main datasets 

Structural business statistics (SBS) give a detailed picture of the structure, performance  and 

main characteristics of European business as a whole and of different sectors. They also make 

an important contribution to several other areas such as national accounts, short-term statistics 

and business registers. 

1  Regulation (EC) No 295/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2008 concerning 

structural business statistics (recast), OJ L 97, 9.4.2008, p. 13. 

2  COM(2014) 243 final. 

3 

 
                                                            
In  general,  the  data  cover  all  sectors  apart  from  agriculture  and  personal  services.  Data  are 

collected on the following variables: 

  output-related variables (e.g. turnover and value added); 

  input-related  variables  on  labour  input  (e.g.  employment  and  hours  worked),  goods  and 

services input (e.g. total purchases) and capital input (e.g. investments in tangible goods); and 

  business  demography  variables  (e.g.  population  of  active  businesses,  number  of  new 

businesses created and number of businesses closed down). 

In  addition,  several  other  important  indicators  are  derived  from  the  above,  in  the  form  of 

ratios of certain monetary variables or per capita values. 

All  Member  States  send  several  datasets,  as  required  under  Commission  Regulation  (EC) 

No 251/2009.3 The main datasets are: 

  annual  enterprise  statistics  (the  characteristics  are  published  by  country  at  NACE  Rev.24 

4-digit level (classes)); 

  annual  enterprise  statistics  by  size  class  (the  characteristics  are  published  by  country  at 

NACE  Rev.2  3-digit  level  (groups),  with  size  class  determined  by  number  of  persons 

employed); 

  annual  regional  statistics  (the  characteristics  are  published  by  NUTS  2  region  at  NACE 

Rev.2 2-digit level (divisions)); and 

  annual  demographic  statistics  broken  down  by  legal  form  or  employee  size  class  (the 

characteristics are published by country, at NACE Rev.2 4-digit level (classes)). 

National  statistical  institutes  (NSIs)  use  statistical  surveys,  business  registers  or  various 

administrative  sources  to  collect  most  of  the  data.  Member  States  apply  various  statistical 

methods  according  to  the  data  source,  such  as  grossing  up,  model-based  estimations  or 

different forms of imputation, to ensure the quality of SBS produced. 

3  Commission Regulation (EC) No 251/2009 of 11 March 2009 implementing and amending Regulation (EC) 
No 295/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council as regards the series of data to be produced for 
structural business statistics and the adaptations necessary after the revision of the statistical classification of 
products by activity (CPA), OJ L 86, 31.3.2009, p. 170. 

4   Commission Regulation (EC) No 1893/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 December 

2006 establishing the statistical classification of economic activities NACE Revision 2 and amending 
Council Regulation (EEC) No 3037/90 as well as certain EC Regulations on specific statistical domains, OJ 
L 393, 30.12.2006, p. 1. 

4 

 
                                                            
All  data  received  from  Member  States  undergo  quality  checks  before  being  published  on 

Eurostat’s website. 

1.3. 

Accessibility of SBS 

All  data  provided  by  Member  States  for  the  reference  year  2013,  together  with  the  EU 

aggregated results, have been available on Eurostat’s website since December 2015. The data 

can  be  accessed  under  ‘Structural  business  statistics  (sbs)’.5  The  SBS  section  can  be  found 

under ‘Industry, trade and services’ or by using the search function.6 

1.4. 

Publications in 2015 and 2016 

In addition to being available on Eurostat’s website, the results have featured in a number of 

articles published on the restructured “Industry and services” section of Statistics Explained.7 

Based  on  wiki  technology,  the  main  purpose  of  Statistics  Explained  is  to  explain  European 

statistics  by  presenting  data  and  highlighting  what  is  interesting  or  surprising  about  them, 

taking into consideration all the necessary background information. 

Many  other  publications  have  referred  to  SBS.  Major  contributions  were  made  in  2015  and 

2016 to the Eurostat yearbook and regional yearbook. 

2. 

EFFECTIVENESS  OF  THE  REGULATION  AND  RELEVANCE  OF 

DATASETS 

2.1. 

Availability and completeness of data 

Tables  1,  2  and  3  show  that,  on  the  whole,  data  sent  by  Member  States  are  reasonably 

complete  for  all  SBS  modules.  Countries  are  considered  as  ‘large’,  ‘medium’  or  ‘small’  in 

terms of their share of value added in the total EU non-financial business economy. 

Missing data can be explained as follows: 

 

there were some problems in calculating certain variables; 

  some data were not available for 2013; 

 

there was a lack of data sources for ‘kind-of-activity unit’ data; 

  data  were  available  after  the  data  transmission  deadline  or  zero  values  were  not 

provided. 

5  http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/structural-business-statistics/data/database 
6  http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat 
7  http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Structural_business_statistics_overview 

5 

 
                                                            
The countries in question are making continued efforts to improve the delivery of all required 

data. 

However, the availability of SBS on Eurostat’s website was limited by the fact that some data, 

especially for small countries, are confidential. 

Table 1: 

Availability and confidentiality of final 2013 data on services, industry, trade 

and construction, NACE Rev.2 

Countries8 

Total cells sent as a percentage of the 
SBS Regulation requirement 

Confidential cells as a 
percentage of cells sent 

Large countries 

Medium countries 

Small countries 

ALL 

95 

96 

99 

97 

11 

15 

19 

16 

The  2013  results  for the  28  EU  Member  States  and  Norway  showed  a  2 %  increase  in  data 

availability as compared with the previous report to the European Parliament and the Council. 

The largest improvement was in the ‘Medium countries’ category. 

Data availability was high (95 %) for statistics on business services (Table 2). It increased for 

medium and small countries, but decreased for large countries. 

The  data  availability  rate  for  business  demography  (Table  3)  decreased  by  3 %.  Only  small 

countries  showed  an  increase.  There  was  a  noticeable  decrease  for  medium  and  large 

countries. 

Table 2: 

Availability  and  confidentiality  of  final  2013  data  on  business  services, 

NACE Rev.2 

Countries 

Total  cells  sent  as  a  percentage  of 
the SBS Regulation requirement 

Confidential 
percentage of cells sent 

cells 

as 

a 

Large countries 

95 

0 

8  To minimise the burden on businesses and the costs to the national statistical authorities, Member States may 
mark data for use as a ‘contribution to European totals only’ (CETO). Eurostat does not publish such data 
and they are not marked as ‘CETO’ when Member States publish them nationally. The use of the CETO flag 
depends on the Member State’s share of total added value in the business economy, as follows: 

Large countries: DE, FR, IT, UK; 
Medium countries: BE, DK, ES, GR, IE, NL, AT, PL, PT, FI, SE, NO; 
Small countries: BG, CZ, EE, HR, CY, LV, LT, LU, HU, MT, RO, SI, SK. 

6 

 
                                                            
Medium countries 

Small countries 

ALL 

98 

93 

95 

13 

23 

16 

Table 3: 

Availability  and  confidentiality  of  final  2013  data  on  business  demography, 

NACE Rev.2 

Countries 

Large countries 

Medium countries 

Small countries  

ALL 

Total  cells  sent  as  a  percentage  of 
the SBS Regulation requirement 

Confidential 
percentage of cells sent 

cells 

as 

a 

91 

84 

99 

92 

8 

11 

11 

11 

2.2. 

Confidentiality rules and their implementation 

The tables in 2.1 show the extent to which confidentiality rules have reduced data availability. 

All Member States have implemented similar confidentiality rules, mainly to avoid releasing 

data  on  one  or  more  specific  enterprises.  In  several  Member  States,  this  approach  was 

supplemented by a ‘dominance rule’ under which data were not published if one responding 

enterprise accounted for more than a certain percentage of the figures. The percentages used 

vary slightly between Member States. 

The  percentages  of  data  classified  as  confidential  vary  from  0 %  to  36 %,  with  higher  rates 

recorded by medium and small countries in general due to the rules mentioned above.   

In  total,  the  2013  confidentiality  rates  for  statistics  on  the  services,  industry,  trade  and 

construction  sectors  were  2  percentage  points  lower  than  those  in  the  previous  report.  The 

rates  were  5  percentage  points  higher  for  business  services,  but  decreased  by  1  percentage 

point for business demography. 

Eurostat considers the share of confidential data across Member States still as very high and 

therefore they are encouraged to put more effort towards reducing the amount of confidential 

data in the future.  

7 

 
 
In addition to the confidentiality rules applied to data at country level, data at EU aggregated 

level  were  also  excluded  from  the  statistics  for  publication  in  order  to  protect  confidential 

national  data.  The  rules  determining  the  circumstances  in  which  EU  totals  must  not  be 

published have been laid down in a Confidentiality Charter agreed with all Member States. 

As a result, 8 % of the aggregated EU 2013 results for  statistics on services, industry, trade 

and construction could not be published for reasons of confidentiality. 

Of the aggregated EU results for business demography, 14.2 % have not been made available 

for  reasons  of  confidentiality.  The  numbers  and  percentages  of  confidential  data  cells  are 

presented in the table below.   

Table 4: 

Confidentiality  of  the  main  variables  included  in  annual  enterprise  statistics 

for which EU 2013 aggregates were published for all levels of NACE Rev.2 

SBS 

Total number 
of data cells 

Number of 
confidential data 
cells 

Confidential 
data (%) 

Services 
Industry 
Trade 
Construction 
Total 
trade and construction) 
Business demography 

(services, 

industry, 

6 001 
9 030 
2 208 
767 

18 006 
20 412 

488 
852 
73 
34 

1 447 
2 900 

8.1 
9.4 
3.3 
4.4 

8.0 
14.2 

2.3. 

Usefulness of SBS 

The majority of the data is received by Eurostat 18 months after the reference year. Data are 
normally validated and published within 4 months after reception. EU totals are calculated 2 
years after the reference year latest. Long transmission delays of the data from Member States 
to Eurostat can hamper the usefulness of the data. Eurostat has only a limited influence on 
Member States to transmit the data on time. 

The number of downloads from Eurostat’s website gives an indication of how useful SBS are. 

The figures in the table below cover the period January 2016 to December 2016, during which 

the 2013 data were available. 

Table 5: 

Number of downloads 

SBS 

Aggregated tables (industry, construction, trade and services) 

8 

Number of downloads 

254 241 

52 795 

 
Industry and construction 
Trade 
Services 
Regional data — all sectors 
Business services 
Business demography 

3. 

ACCURACY 

85 920 
27 179 
31 446 
17 349 
5 171 
34 381 

In  order  to  measure  the  accuracy  of  SBS,  Commission  Regulation  (EU)  No 275/20109 

requires all Member States to provide Eurostat with information on quality indicators such as 

coefficients  of  variation  on  an  annual  basis.  They  must  also  provide  information  on  the 

methodology used to collect and process the data. On the basis of the information provided by 

all Member States, Eurostat has conducted an assessment for 2013, the main parts of which 

are included in this report. 

Member States are free to decide on the most efficient and effective ways of collecting and 

processing data in accordance with national particularities (e.g. size class, economic activity 

and regions) and available administrative sources. 

In order to evaluate the quality of the data at EU level, Eurostat has calculated aggregated EU 

coefficients of variation based on the national coefficients of variation for six characteristics 

and for all sectors at NACE Rev.2 1-digit level (Section). 

Table 6: 

Aggregated  EU  coefficients  of  variation  for  statistics  in  services,  industry, 

trade and construction (%) 

2013 

Percentage of EU coefficients of variation (%) 

Coefficient of 
variation10 

Number of 
enterprises 

Turnover 

Added 
value 

Personnel 
costs 

Gross 
investment 

0.0-0.5 
0.6-1.5 
1.6-2.5 
>2.5 

81 
13 
6 
0 

65 
24 
6 
6 

50 
50 
0 
0 

100 
0 
0 
0 

11 
28 
17 
44 

Number of  
persons 
employed  
69 
31 
0 
0 

9     Commission Regulation (EU) No 275/2010 of 30 March 2010 for implementing Regulation (EC) No 295/2008 
of  the  European  Parliament  and  of  the  Council,  as  regards  the  criteria  for  the  evaluation  of  the  quality  of 
structural business statistics, OJ L 86, 1.4.2010, p. 1. 

10  The coefficients of variation were calculated for final 2013 data for series 1A, 2A, 3A and 4A (Annexes I-IV), 

at NACE Rev.2 1-digit level (sections). 

9 

 
                                                            
The table above shows that the aggregated EU coefficients of variation are below 1.5 in most 

cases.  The  exception  is  the  gross  investment  variable,  for  which  the  coefficients  are  mainly 

between 0.6 and 2.5. 

4. 

COHERENCE AND COMPARABILITY 

As  mentioned,  Member  States  shall  deliver  a  report  for  each  reference  year  which  contains 

information about the methodology used to collect and process the data. 

4.1. 

Coherence 

Coherence  refers  to  the  extent  to  which  statistical  correctness  allows  data  from  different 

sources  to  be  combined.  Eurostat  is  therefore  keen  to  identify  the  features  common  to  SBS 

and other business surveys and to determine to what extent they are consistent. 

SBS  can  be  used  alongside  statistics  from  a  number  of  other  sources,  such  as  business 

registers,  national  accounts,  labour  cost  surveys,  labour  force  statistics  and  short-term 

statistics.  Analysing  the  coherence  of  SBS  and  the  other  statistical  sources  used  revealed  a 

number  of  differences  in  both  the  data  and  the  methodologies  used.  For  any  particular 

statistical source, the methodology that best suits the purposes of that source will be chosen. 

For this reason, there tend to be differences in methodology between sources. 

4.2. 

Comparability 

Statistics  on  services,  industry,  trade  and  construction  are  comparable  over  time  and  across 

countries only from reference year 2005 onwards, as some countries implemented changes in 

methodology  and  scope  before  that  year.  The  implementation  of  the  new  classification  of 

activities (NACE Rev.2) in 2008 prevents any time series being carried across that year. 

Statistics on business services and business demography are comparable from 2008, when the 

survey became mandatory. 

5. 

DEADLINES FOR SUPPLYING DATA 

The deadlines, by which Member States must supply data for the reference year, as laid down 

in the SBS Regulation, are as follows: 

  10 months after the year-end for preliminary statistics on services, industry, trade and 

construction; and 

  18 months after the year-end for final data for all sectors. 

10 

 
 
For reference year 2013, 18 countries delivered all their data on time. 

6. 

ACCESSIBILITY AND CLARITY 

All  SBS  are  available  free  of  charge  on  Eurostat’s  website  under  ‘Industry,  trade  and 

services’,  together  with  detailed  explanations  of  methodological  issues  that  may  be  of 

relevance to users.11 

The NSIs also publish SBS nationally. This makes the data even more accessible to users. 

7. 

COMPLIANCE WITH THE SBS REGULATION   

Member  States’  compliance  with  the  SBS  Regulation  is  assessed  on  the  basis  of  the 

completeness of the data provided, the number of versions received before publication of the 

final data and whether the data are provided within the deadlines. 

The  overall  compliance  score  for  2013  data  shows  an  improvement  compared  with  the 

compliance level recorded in the previous report. Specific circumstances in a country can lead 

to a drop in the compliance score can bring the compliance score down. 

An average of 1.3 versions of each Member State’s  data was provided before the final data 

were published. 

Table  7  provides  an  overall  assessment  of  compliance  for  all  28  EU  Member  States  and 

Norway. 

The countries have been awarded one of four grades for compliance: 

VG =  Very  good  compliance.  All  required  data (with  minor  exceptions)  were  delivered  on 

time (scores of 90 % or above). 

G  =  Good compliance. There were a few elements missing or minor delays in data delivery 

(scores between 70 % and 89 %). 

P  =  Data were partially available, but major chunks of required information were missing 

or deadlines were not met (scores between 10 % and 69 %). 

N  =  A  large  part  of  the  data  was  missing  or  there  were  major  delays  in  data  delivery 

(scores 

of 

less 

than 

10 %). 

11  http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/structural-business-statistics/overview 

11 

 
 
                                                            
Table 7: 

Overall assessment of compliance 

Country 
AT, BE, BG, CZ, DE, DK, ES, HR, HU, IT, LT, LV, MT, NL, NO, 
PT, RO, SI, SK, UK 
CY, EE, FI, FR, LU, PL, SE 
EL, IE 
- 

Overall score 

VG 

G 
P 
N 

The table shows that compliance was ‘very good’ or ‘good’ for most Member States. 

Eurostat  took  steps  to  improve  compliance  in  two  ways:  by  reporting  on  the  compliance 

monitoring carried out and by providing Member States with a tool for data validation. 

Eurostat submits a compliance report to the SBS Steering Group once a year. In some cases, 

the Director-General of Eurostat has also sent letters to the heads of NSIs. 

Eurostat  has  developed  a  data  validation  tool  which  Member  States  can  use  to  check  for 

accuracy  and  confidentiality  before  sending  the  data  to  Eurostat.  The  vast  majority  of  the 

Member States use this validation tool, which has helped reduce the number of versions and 

improve the quality of the data transmitted by the Member States. 

Eurostat  is  also  involved  in  an  activity  to  achieve  full  compliance  with  the  SBS  Regulation 

with  respect  to  the  correct  application  of  the  ‘enterprise’  as  a  statistical  unit  as  defined  in 
Council  Regulation  (EEC)  No  696/9312.  This  regulation  states  that  ‘The  enterprise  is  the 

smallest combination of legal units that is an organizational unit producing goods or services, 

which benefits from a certain degree of autonomy in decision-making...’. Legal units that do 

not  have  sufficient  autonomy  of  decision  should  be  combined  with  their  controlling  unit  to 

form  a  single  enterprise.  23  countries  (22  EU  Member  States  and  1  EFTA  Member  State) 

were considered to be not fully compliant with the application of the enterprise as a statistical 

unit in SBS. All these countries submitted their action plan to Eurostat for full implementation 

of the enterprise as a statistical unit in SBS. They started working on implementation in June 

2016, with Eurostat checking on progress every 6 months.   

12 Council Regulation (EEC) No 696/93 

12 

 
 
                                                            
8. 

THE  BURDEN  ON  BUSINESSES  AND  CHANGES  INTRODUCED  AND 

ENVISAGED IN SBS 

8.1. 

Background 

In compliance with the SBS Regulation, the NSIs continue to provide a core set of structural 

business  statistics  (e.g.  information  on  the  business  population  and  births  and  deaths  of 

enterprises  and  their  survival,  turnover,  value  added,  employment,  gross  investment,  value 

output, factor input) and make them available to users. However, continuing to compile SBS 

statistics  that  are  not  linked  to  other  business  statistics  domains–  in  line  with  the  current 

compartmentalised approach in which each domain is covered by a separate legal framework 

–  is  no  longer  deemed  sustainable.  This  is  because  it  is  not  agile  enough  to  respond  to 

emerging user needs and reduce the statistical burden on businesses.  

Aware of these challenges, Eurostat has been working with interested parties in the European 

Statistical System (ESS) to adapt the statistical production process to major developments in 

society  and  the  globalised  economy  using  a  set  of  measures  as  part  of  the  Framework 

Regulation  Integrating  Business  Statistics  (FRIBS)  project.  The  new  legal  framework  for 

integrating  business  statistics  deals  with  broader  areas.  This  results  in  the  integration  of  an 

interdependent  production  system  that  draws  upon  multiple  sources.  In  terms  of  efficiency 

gains, the project aims to tackle a wide range of problems and: 

  bring about more efficient statistical production; 

  produce better comparability and consistency across domains; 

  streamline data requirements; 

 

 

reduce the burden on businesses; 

respond to new and more complex user needs. 

8.2. 

Changes introduced and envisaged in SBS 

Reducing the burden on businesses is crucial for safeguarding the conditions for the statistical 

production  system  in  Europe  to  work  effectively  to  achieve  the envisaged  goals  in business 

statistics.  To  this  end,  Eurostat  has  worked  with  NSIs  on  an  ongoing  basis  to  reduce  this 

burden and increase its relevance by simplifying the data requirements and ensuring that the 

available statistics meet the needs of users.  

Several  consultations  have  taken  place  with  the  main  users  of  SBS  in  and  outside  the 

Commission.  As a  result, Eurostat  has  removed the requirements imposed  on the ‘Financial 

13 

 
and  insurance  activities’  sector  and  introduced  standard  SBS  variables  to  this  sector.  This 

applies to data collected for 2013.  

In  addition,  some  of  the  steps  taken  by  Member  States  to  reduce  the  burden  on  businesses 

were  related  to  SBS  data  collection.  Sample  surveys  are  frequently  used  by  the  majority  of 

Member States, and they have adopted new sampling strategies to reduce both the burden on 

business and the costs for NSIs. A number of countries have also excluded small businesses 

from  their  surveys  and  used  administrative  data  sources  combined  with  estimates  instead. 

Some countries have developed and implemented online systems for collecting annual fiscal 

and  statistical  information.  These  systems  use  modern  information  technology  and  can 

improve the quality of the data and reduce the time it takes to enter and process it.  

In terms of changes planned to SBS as part of the FRIBS project, the following measures are 

set to be implemented to make official EU statistics more relevant. While this may bring with 

it  additional  implementation  costs  for  NSIs  and  businesses  such  as  additional  surveys  for 

some units, these costs will be offset by the benefits of more standardised data structure and 

by simplifications to some data requirements of several business statistics regulations.  

 

Improve the coverage of all SBS by extending the NACE Rev. 2 activity breakdown to 

the following sections: P (Education), Q (Human health and social work activities), R 

(Arts, entertainment and recreation) and S96 (Other personal service activities). 

  Extend  the  coverage  of  the  variables  ‘investment  in  machinery  and  equipment’  and 

‘hours worked for service sectors’. 

  Provide  provisional  data  on  SMEs  (by  size  class)  for  two  key  variables  (turnover, 

number of persons employed) within 10 months after the reference period. 

  Restructure  data  requirements  for  the  ‘Financial  and  insurance  activities’  sector  by 

introducing  standard  SBS  variables,  deleting  sector-specific  variables  and  extending 

coverage  to  all  subsectors  such  as  financial  leasing,  mortgage  credit  granting, 

consumer credit granting and similar financial entities and auxiliary activities. 

  Delete data on turnover breakdown by product for the trade sector. 

  Delete data on environmental protection expenditure. 

  Decrease  the  level  of  detail  (NACE  2-digit)  for  variables  specifically  needed  for 

National Accounts. 

14 

 
9. 

FURTHER DEVELOPMENT 

SBS focus solely on the national level at present, not taking into account the new environment 

in which business activities keep evolving. The single market and globalisation have changed 

how businesses are organised. To address this, Eurostat, in cooperation with Member States, 

has  considered  several  measures  to  amend  SBS  "in  order  to"  or  "aiming  at  responding"  to 

changing user needs, which is fundamental for the relevance of official statistics. 

Proposed amendments to the current SBS requirements are as follows. 

 

Introduce  the  aspect  of  control  of  enterprises,  making  it  possible  to  divide  the  SBS 

population  into  3  categories:  independent  enterprises,  domestically-controlled  and  foreign-

controlled enterprises.  

 

Introduce the distinction in SBS as to whether an enterprise is involved in international 

trade or not, making it possible to divide the SBS population into 2 additional subcategories: 

internationally trading and not internationally trading enterprises. SBS characteristics will also 

be provided separately. 

 

Align  the  methodology  for  foreign  direct  investment  (FDI)  and  foreign  affiliates 

statistics (FATS): there is a strong link between FDI and FATS as FATS entities are a subset 

of  the  FDI  population.  It  could  be  argued  that  FDI  is  the  dynamic  component  of  FATS. 

However, the methodology for compiling statistics on FDI and FATS is not consistent at the 

moment. 

 

Modes  of  supply  —  a  better  representation  of  services:  for  internationally  traded 

services,  the  mode  of  supply  shows  how  the  services  are  traded  between  two  countries. 

Presenting  services  like  this  also  includes  FATS  and  gives  a  better  insight  into  the  ‘entire’ 

services trade. 

 

Services  trade  by  enterprise  characteristics  (STEC)  —  a  better  representation  of 

services: STEC statistics improve the quality of measuring economic globalisation based on 

input-output  tables  and  the  concept  of  ‘trading  in  value  added’;  because  it  adds  the  NACE 

aspect  to  statistics  on  internationally  traded  services.  Services  statistics  will  then  also  be 

available  on  the  economic  activity  of  business  traders  in  services.  They  will  be  better 

integrated  into  business  statistics.  Against  this  background,  the  question  of  how  to  classify 

services needs to be addressed so that services are fully integrated into business statistics, but 

also  satisfy  the  needs  of  other  users.  This  is  linked  to  the issue  of  whether  to  use  Extended 

15 

 
 
 
Balance  of  Payments  Services  Classification  (EboPS)  or  Classification  of  Products  by 

Activity  (CPA).  The  possibility  of  providing  services  trade  statistics  based  on  an  enterprise 

size-class  breakdown  (0-9,  10-49,  50-249,  250+  persons  employed  or,  alternatively,  the 

corresponding thresholds in value added) will also be explored. 

 

Produce statistics by business function: modern enterprises are often structured based 

on  the  concept  of  business  functions.  This  means  they  can  in-  or  outsource  parts  of  the 

production process. If an enterprise is outsourcing, knowing its economic activity (NACE) is 

not enough because this can hide which types of jobs are lost. For this reason, the two surveys 

that  Eurostat  conducted  on  international  sourcing  introduced  the  concept  of  business 

functions. An expert group from the United Nations Statistics Division is busy finalising this 

classification. 

 

Produce  statistics  on  the  statistical  unit  enterprise  group:  multinational  enterprise 

groups  will  play  an  increasingly  important  role  in  economic  globalisation.  FATS  currently 

provide partial information on multinational enterprises because they collect statistics on the 

activities of foreign-controlled affiliates. However, they do not collect or provide information 

on  domestically-controlled  affiliates  that  belong  to  the  same  enterprise  group.  Nor  do  they 

provide information on its ultimate controlling institutional unit. 

Micro-data linking (MDL) exercises can be used to gather some of the data requirements from 

existing  data  sources.  As  a  result,  implementing  these  requirements  should  not  impose  an 

additional  burden,  although  implementing  some  of  them  will  require  a  significant 

commitment and investment from ESS in the coming years.  

In  collaboration  with  the  MSs,  Eurostat  commits  itself  to  continue  working  on  the  issue  of 

variability in the application of turnover thresholds used for the businesses to be registered in 

the business registers across Europe. This will improve the comparability of national data in 

business statistics. 

These eventual amendments will therefore be a matter for further discussion in order to define 

priorities on the basis of their added value and the availability of sources. 

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