REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL on the final evaluation of the implementation of the European statistical programme 2013-2020
Date: 2021-12-15
Institutions: European Commission, Eurostat
Subjects: EU programme, EU statistics, Eurostat, Internet site, data collection, innovation, official statistics, statistical method

EN 

  EN 

   EUROPEAN COMMISSION  Brussels, 15.12.2021  COM(2021) 794 final  REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND THE COUNCIL     on the final evaluation of the implementation of the European statistical programme 2013-2020   {SWD(2021) 383 final}  
 
 
1. 

INTRODUCTION 
Under  Article 13  of  Regulation  (EC)  223/20091  on  European  statistics,  ‘the 
European  statistical  programme  shall  provide  the  framework  for  the  development, 
production and dissemination of European statistics, setting out the main fields and 
the  objectives  of  the  actions  envisaged  for  a  period  corresponding  to  that  of  the 
multiannual financial framework’. 

The 2013-2020 European statistical programme was established by Regulation (EU) 
99/20132, initially for the years 2013-2017. It was then extended by Regulation (EU) 
2017/19513 to cover the remaining period of the previous EU multiannual financial 
framework,  i.e.  2018-2020.  Throughout  this  document,  it  is  referred  to  as  ‘the 
programme’ or ‘the ESP’, while the Regulation establishing it is referred to as ‘the 
amended Regulation’. 

The  general  objective  of  the  ESP  is  for  the  European  Statistical  System  (ESS)  to 
continue  to  be  the  leading  provider  of  high-quality  statistics  on  Europe.  As 
a spending programme, the ESP is the overall framework for developing, producing 
and  disseminating  European  statistics.  As  such,  it  provides  the  finances  for 
developing  and  maintaining  Eurostat’s  statistical  infrastructure  and  the  ESS  as 
managed by Eurostat. The ESP also provides financial support to Member States. 

The  requirement  to  carry  out  a  final  evaluation  and  present  a  report  on  the  ESP  is 
enshrined in Article 15 of the amended Regulation, which also states that: 

‘The report shall in particular evaluate:  

a) 

b) 

c) 

d) 

the outcome of the reprioritisation and cost evaluation of statistical products;  

the actions taken by the ESS to reduce the implementation and production costs 
for Member States and to limit the overall burden stemming from the statistical 
projects and fields covered by the programme;  

the  progress  on  rendering  access  to  official  statistics  easier  and  more 
user-friendly, including the provision of data on the Eurostat website; and 

the  progress  on  the  improvement  of  data  availability,  including  on  social 
economy activities and on the Europe 2020 indicators.’ 

The  evaluation  also  serves  to  fulfil  the  requirements  of  the  Commission’s  better 
regulation agenda and thus follows the better regulation guidelines for evaluations. It 
therefore  covers  the  five  compulsory  evaluation  criteria:  effectiveness,  efficiency, 
relevance, coherence and EU added value. 

The  conclusions  of  this  evaluation  could  also  be  useful  when  conducting  the 
mid-term  evaluation  of  the  single  market  programme  (SMP),  which  is,  with  its 

1 OJ L 87, 31.3.2009, p. 164. 
2 OJ L 39, 9.2.2013, p. 12. 
3 OJ L 284, 31.10.2017, p. 1. 

1 

 
 
                                                           
objective  on  high-quality  European  statistics,  the  successor  of  the  ESP.  The  SMP 
Regulation4 is applicable from 1 January 2021.  

This evaluation covers the entire period of the programme (2013-2020), with the two 
previous mid-term evaluations covering 2013-20175. 

The  report  is  based  on  an  evaluation  staff  working  document,  produced  by  the 
European Commission, which accompanies the report. The staff working document 
gives  more  details  on  the  evaluation  process  and  results.  It  has  in  turn  been 
supported by an evaluation study conducted by an external contractor, who gave an 
independent opinion on the work Eurostat carried out. 

To  get  robust  results,  the  contractor  used  different  sources,  starting  with  a  large 
review  of  existing  documents.  Then,  the  contractor  carried  out  an  extensive 
consultation  with  users  and  producers  of  statistics6.  This  included  i)  scoping 
interviews  with  representatives  of  Eurostat  and  other  Directorates-General  of  the 
Commission  (DGs);  ii)  a  public  consultation;  iii)  targeted  surveys  of  users  and 
producers; and iv) 50 interviews with different types of stakeholders. The contractor 
also carried out four thematic case studies and five country case studies. 

2. 

BACKGROUND 

The ESP lasted for 8 years – 2013 to 2020. The programme’s total budget was EUR 
489  million.  Around  41%  was  spent  on  grants  and  59%  on  procurements. 
Furthermore,  almost  EUR  225  million  supplemented  the  ESP’s  own  budget  in  the 
form  of  credits  sub-delegated  by  policy  DGs  to  cover  data  collections  they 
specifically requested. 

The budget was spent on the programme’s three priority areas. The first ‘Statistical 
outputs’ dealt with producing European statistics. In this area, the money was mostly 
spent  on  grants  used  to  provide  financial  support  to  Member  States,  who  used  the 
support  to  improve  their  national  statistical  systems  and  to  implement  measures 
enabling  them  carry  out  new  data  collections.  All  Member  States  benefited  from 
grants, which ultimately allowed them to produce more and better quality data. As a 
result,  the  total  number  of  disseminated  datasets  increased  by  809  or  around  18% 
from 2013 to 2020. 

4 OJ L 153, 3.5.2021, p. 1. 
5 First mid-term evaluation: https://europa.eu/!tcF9J4; 
Second mid-term evaluation: https://europa.eu/!QCyfpB. 
6 Users include different categories, such as decision-makers at EU, national and local level; international 
organisations; academia and researchers; businesses; NGOs; media and European citizens in general. 
Producers or are mainly national statistical institutes and other national authorities. 

2 

 
 
                                                           
Figure 1: Number of datasets published by Eurostat, 2013-20207 

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s
a
t
a
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b
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6.000

5.000

4.000

4.596

4.674

4.902

5.065

5.396

5.227

5.239

5.405

3.000

2.000

1.000

0

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

Source: Eurostat’s reference databases 

The  second  priority  area  ‘Production  methods  of  European  statistics’  dealt  with 
improving  the  way  statistics  are  produced,  their  quality  and  the  way  they  are 
disseminated.  Grants  were  given  to  Member  States  to  strengthen  the  quality  and 
efficiency of statistical production through innovative statistical methods and tools. 
The  activities  in  the  scope  of  the  grants  were  co-financed  by  the  European 
Commission  and  the  Member  States,  which  used  the  money  to  participate  in  the 
modernisation  projects  under  the  European  Statistical  System  Vision  2020  (ESS 
Vision  2020).  In  addition,  procurements  were  used  either  to  partly  finance  ESS 
Vision 2020 projects or to finance the modernisation of the statistical infrastructure 
used to regularly produce and disseminate the statistics. Examples of results are: 

  a modern the IT infrastructure used for exchanging data with Member States; 
  a renovated website for Eurostat; 
  a series of new visualisation tools; and 
  new ways to reach out to users. 

The third priority area ‘Partnership’ aimed at supporting the production and quality 
of  statistics  by  improving  the  cooperation  within  the  ESS  and  with  other 
international  organisations  and  countries  outside  the  EU.  The  budget  was  mostly 
used to help develop and to a lesser degree produce statistics in countries outside of 
the  EU  and  the  European  Free  Trade  Association,  with  particular  emphasis  on 
enlargement  and the European neighbourhood policy. This  has enabled  Eurostat  to 
regularly  publish  data  on  non-EU  countries,  especially  to  support  the  enlargement 
process and the negotiations with those non-EU countries. 

In spending the budget, no major problems or infringements occurred. Eurostat put 
in place an effective system of anti-fraud measures, preventing fraud. 

7  The  decrease  between  2017  and  2018  was  due  to  the  implementation  of  the  new  datasets  in  national 
accounts  in  2017,  following  the  new  European  System  of  Accounts  (Version  2010)  legislation,  while  keeping 
those  following  the  previous  system  (Version  1995).  The  datasets  following  the  previous  legislation  were 
removed in 2018. 

3 

 
 
 
                                                           
 
 
3. 

KEY FINDINGS 

3.1. 

Relevance 

The  ESP  provided  the  framework  for  developing,  producing,  and  disseminating 
European  statistics,  setting  out  the  objectives  of  the  activities  envisaged  for 
2013-2020.  It  financed  the  development  and  maintenance  of  Eurostat’s  statistical 
infrastructure and the ESS. As such, the ESP’s objective  was to  fulfil  the needs of 
Eurostat  and  the  national  statistics  institutes,  and  other  national  authorities,  as 
producers  of  European  statistics,  while  also  serving  the  needs  of  a  wide  range  of 
users of these statistics. 

The  evaluation  therefore  explored  the  relationship  between  the  programme’s 
objectives and activities and the needs of the ESS and stakeholders more generally, 
to  provide  an  evidence-based  judgement  on  the  extent  to  which  (i)  the  ESP  was 
originally  relevant  and  (ii)  the  activities  were  suitable  enough  to  achieve  the 
programme’s objectives. The evaluation focused on the needs of both the producers 
and the users of European statistics. 

The  findings  indicate  that  the  ESP  was  appropriately  designed  to  satisfy  the 
stakeholders’  needs,  and  it  was  found  to  have  satisfied  their  needs  which  evolved 
over  time.  At  the  same  time,  while  the  ESP  implemented  appropriate  activities  to 
meet  its  objectives,  the  analysis  showed  that  these  activities  were  not  enough  to 
deliver  all  the  statistics  that  users  had  wished  for.  However,  some  of  the  thematic 
areas  that  stakeholders  identified  as  missing  go  beyond  the  scope  of  the  ESP  –  so 
non-delivery in these areas cannot be considered as failures in the implementation of 
the programme.  

The ESP has been confirmed as being highly relevant, clearly demonstrated by the 
number  of  data  extractions  made  by  external  users  from  Eurostat  reference 
databases, which greatly increased since 2014 from 6 813 000 to 21 480 000 in 2020 
(+315%). 

Figure  2:  Number  of  data  extractions  from  Eurostat’s  reference  databases 
2014-2020 

)
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i
l
l
i

m

(

s
n
o
i
t
c
a
r
t
x
e
a
t
a
d
f
o
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b
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21,5

18,3

16,5

13,3

11,3

8,1

6,8

25

20

15

10

5

0

2014

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

Source: Eurostat’s website monitoring 

4 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
That  is  further  substantiated  by  the  increase  in  the  number  of  users  accessing  the 
Eurostat  website,  which  is  estimated  based  on  the  number  of  distinct  IP  addresses 
visiting the website, which rose from 3 441 157 visits in 2014 to 11 731 274 in 2020 
(+240%).  

Over the programme’s lifetime, Eurostat increased its presence on social media and 
the numbers of followers grew constantly. Eurostat opened its Facebook account on 
10 January 2017 and its Instagram account on 4 May 2020. The number of followers 
on  Twitter  grew  from  25 000  in  2013  to  164 000  in  2020,  while  also  in  2020  the 
number of followers on Facebook reached 62 000 and on Instagram 9 500.  

There was some tension between user needs which were continuously increasing and 
producers’ limitations in keeping up with new demands under an already ambitious 
programme. This  meant  that a balance  had to  be struck between producer capacity 
and  user  requests.  In  addition,  needs  related  to  the  adaptation  to  technological 
advances  such  as  big  data  became  more  prominent  during  the  programme,  as 
reflected  when  the  ESP  was  extended.  This  resulted  in  specific  activities  being 
carried out, mainly in the context of the ESS Vision 2020 implementation projects. 
Such  activities  will  continue  in  the  next  programme  and  their  results  have  the 
potential to provide solutions to some of the problems the ESS still faces in terms of 
resources and costs. 

3.2. 

Effectiveness 

The  analysis  of  effectiveness  considers  how  successful  the  ESP’s  activities  have 
been in achieving or progressing towards fulfilling the programme’s objectives. The 
evaluation  explored  the  relation  between  the  programme’s  objectives  and  its 
activities. It provided an evidence-based judgement on the progress made to date and 
the ESP’s role in delivering the observed changes, looking for evidence of whether 
or how these changes are linked to the programme or what factors have influenced 
why  an  activity/objective  was  either  (partially)  successful/unsuccessful  or  not  yet 
achieved by the end of the programme.  

The evaluation findings show that the ESP was effective in achieving its objectives 
despite remaining weaknesses with the timeliness and the completeness of European 
statistics.  Between  2013  and  2020,  Eurostat  provided  high-quality  statistics,  which 
have been used by a wide range of users for a wide range of purposes, e.g. helping to 
develop,  monitor  and  evaluate  policies  at  the  EU  and  Member  State  level.  In  that 
period, the ESP also increased the availability of its data and statistics and, to a more 
limited extent, achieved efficiency gains in the production of its statistics.  

Table  1  below  shows  the  quantity  of  statistics  and  long  time  series8  published  by 
Eurostat. Statistical coverage is defined as the number of (statistical) indicators, sub-
indicators and all their breakdowns included in Eurobase (the Eurostat dissemination 
database)  not  taking  into  account  those  differing  only  because  of  the  time 

8 Long time series are defined in this case as those covering 10 or more consecutive years. 

5 

 
 
                                                           
dimension9.  The  table  thus  demonstrates  the  increasing  amount  of  data  made 
available by Eurostat over the years. 

Table 1: Statistical coverage in millions of statistics 

Year 
Statistical coverage 
Long time series 
Source: Eurobase 

2017 

2018 

2019 

2020 

328 
35 

366 
42 

423 
50 

446 
55 

In  addition,  Eurostat  effectively  developed  and  strengthened  partnerships  with  its 
members  within  the  ESS  as  well  as  with  those  beyond  the  ESS,  in  particular 
international  organisations.  However,  more  needs  to  be  done,  in  particular  on 
gaining  access  to  privately  held  data  and  creating  partnerships  with  private 
organisations,  something  which  started  in  2020  and  is  being  addressed  in  the  next 
programme, the SMP. 

Beyond  achieving  its  objectives,  the  ESP  was  also  effective  in  rendering  access  to 
official statistics easier and more user-friendly between 2013 and 2020. 

3.3. 

Efficiency 

Regarding  the  ESP’s  efficiency,  the  evaluation  focused  on  the  costs  of  producing 
European statistics as well as the trends of these costs and the burden on the national 
statistics institutes and other national authorities. Three general issues were assessed 
to find out if the ESP was run efficiently. The first issue related to whether it ensured 
the best use of available financial and human resources. The second concentrated on 
the costs and burden involved in producing European statistics in the ESS and how 
they  have  evolved.  The  third  was  to  assess  how  efficient  the  ESP  process  was  for 
reporting and monitoring. 

The  analysis  of  the  evidence  suggests  that  the  programme  was  efficient.  The  ESP 
demonstrated  efficient  use  of  both  financial  and  human  resources  while  delivering 
high-quality  European  statistics.  Moreover,  a  higher  level  of  statistics  production 
was achieved during the period evaluated. Factors underpinning these developments 
were good governance, management and monitoring mechanisms.  

Human resources at Eurostat decreased by 7% (52 people) while the ESP was being 
implemented.  In  the  same  period,  the  number  of  the  annual  datasets  published  by 
Eurostat  increased  by  18%.  This  means  that  Eurostat  staff  increased  their 
productivity as regards providing statistics by over 20%. 

Table  2:  Number  of  Eurostat  staff  and  published  datasets  at  the  end  of  years 
2013-2020 

Year 
Eurostat staff as of 31 December 

2013 

2014 

2015 

2016 

2017 

2018 

2019 

2020 

791 

789 

796 

778 

Number of published datasets 

4 596 

4 674 

4 902 

5 065 

Number of datasets per Eurostat staff 
Source: Eurostat 

5.8 

5.9 

6.2 

6.5 

751 

741 
5 396  5 2277 
7.1 

7.2 

734 

739 

5 239 

5 405  

7.1 

7.3 

9 The derived datasets are not counted, but the variables included in more than one primary dataset (e.g. GDP 
and population) are counted as different statistics. 

6 

 
 
                                                           
The Internal Audit service (IAS) audited Eurostat’s quality management of statistical 
processes.  The  audit  found  aspects  that  needed  to  be  improved  and  the  IAS 
formulated  two  recommendations.  Eurostat  implemented  an  action  plan  to  address 
them.  The  IAS  concluded  in  its  follow-up  that  Eurostat  had  adequately  and 
effectively  implemented  the  first  recommendation.  Eurostat  will  implement  the 
second one by 31 December 2021, as scheduled in the action plan. 

There were concerns over the costs for Member States and the administrative burden 
placed  on  data  providers,  due  to  the  need  to  produce  an  increasing  volume  of 
statistics,  which  required  steadily  raising  the  efficiency  of  statistics  production. 
Several initiatives were undertaken to respond to this challenge, such as: 

  carrying out the activities within the ESS Vision 2020; 
  modernising business statistics resulting in the European Business Statistics 
Regulation10,  social  statistics11  resulting  in  the  Integrated  European  Social 
Statistics  Regulation  and  agriculture  statistics  resulting  in  the  Integrated 
Farm Statistics Regulation12; and 

  strengthening partnerships within the ESS. 

3.4. 

Coherence 

This section focuses on the internal and external coherence of the ESP. The internal 
coherence of a programme is determined by looking at how the various components 
of that programme operate together to achieve the intended objectives. The external 
coherence  of  a  programme  relates  to  the  extent  to  which  the  programme  activities 
align with other activities of the EU and its international partners. 

The  evaluation  analysed  where  and  how  the  programme  objectives  and  activities 
worked  internally  and  externally  in  a  coherent  manner  and  points  to  areas  where 
there were tensions. 

No overlaps or inconsistencies were identified at the programme level between the 
objectives and among the activities listed within the ESP’s regulations and planning 
documents  (internal  coherence).  The  evaluation  identified  various  governance 
bodies and advisory boards with a coherent mandate. Their work contributed to the 
internal  coherence  of  the  ESP  by  ensuring  that  its  activities  were  in  line  with  its 
objectives.  Furthermore,  interviewees  involved  in  producing  European  statistics 
highlighted the internal coherence of the ESP. 

The  work  carried  out  under  the  ESP  was  in  line  with  the  Commission’s  priorities. 
Relevant European statistics corresponded to the European Commission’s 10 general 
objectives/priorities and  the  ESP’s  sub-priority  areas were in  line with  the Juncker 
Commission priority areas. 

Eurostat cooperated effectively with EU bodies and agencies, as well as international 
organisations.  This  cooperation  resulted  in  the  external  coherence  of  the  ESP  by 
ensuring  it  was  aligned  with  the  wider  EU  objectives  and  needs  as  well  as  with 

10 Regulation (EU) 2019/2152. 
11 Regulation (EU) 2019/1700. 
12 Regulation (EU) 2018/1091. 

7 

 
 
                                                           
international statistical activities. It also ensured the development of comparable and 
harmonised European statistics at the regional and international level. 

The  IAS  carried  out  two  audits,  one  on  the  production  process  and  the  quality  of 
statistics not  produced by  Eurostat  and  the other on the  effectiveness  of  Eurostat’s 
cooperation with external stakeholders. Both audits found aspects that needed to be 
improved and the IAS formulated some recommendations. Eurostat implemented an 
action plan to address both sets of recommendations and the IAS concluded in their 
follow-ups that Eurostat had adequately and effectively implemented them. 

However, the evaluation identified some weaknesses that could potentially affect the 
ESP’s external coherence:  

 

 

 

the  lack  of  flexibility  of  European  statistics  to  respond  to  emerging  needs 
(which  might  cause  a  misalignment  with  other  EU  strategies  should  these 
needs not be covered);  
the  burden  on  Member  States  when  replying  to  individual  DG  requests  for 
statistics; and  
the  need  to  gain  access  to  privately  held  data  and  create  partnerships  with 
private organisations (for which activities began in 2020).  

They  are  now  being  tackled  and  will  continue  to  be  addressed  in  the  next 
programme. 

Overall, the findings suggested that the ESP was internally and externally coherent. 

3.5. 

EU added value 

The  EU  added  value  criterion  looks  at  the  value  resulting  from  the  ESP  that  is 
additional to the value that would have resulted from similar activities only carried 
out at national level or by individual Member States. This criterion is linked to the 
principle of subsidiarity:  the EU should only act when it can achieve better results 
than the Member States acting alone. Here, the analysis focused on the added value 
of the ESP to both users and producers of European statistics.  

The evidence collected confirmed the EU added value of the ESP. It suggested that 
the  programme’s  main  added  value  was  the  way  it  contributed  to  harmonising 
European statistics to deliver comparable statistics, provide them in a single location 
and  support  evidence-based  policy  making  at  EU  and  national  level.  The  ESP 
produced  high-quality,  comprehensive,  comparable  and  reliable  statistics across  all 
Member States. 

Without  the  ESP,  evidence-based  policymaking  at  EU  level  and  policymaking  at 
country level, based on comparative analysis of statistics across countries, would be 
very difficult (due to potential inconsistencies in the evidence).  

Users  from  EU  institutions,  Member  States  and  candidate  countries  confirmed  the 
EU  added  value  of  providing  European  statistics  in  a  single  online  location  (‘one-
stop shop’).  

The  programme  also  established  a  clear  roadmap  for  statistics  production  for 
producers, including candidate countries. Through cooperation between Eurostat and 

8 

 
 
international  organisations,  the  ESP  also  helped  strengthen  the  international 
statistical  community  and  increase  efforts  to  ensure  the  quality  of  statistics  at  the 
international level. 

3.6. 

Specific points of Article 15 

The  answers  to  the  four  specific  points  mentioned  in  Article  15  of  the  ESP 
Regulation  are based on the evidence collected and the analysis  carried out for the 
five  evaluation  criteria.  The  conclusions  of  the  evaluation  for  those  four  specific 
aspects are summarised below: 

a)  ‘The  outcome  of  the  reprioritisation  and  cost  evaluation  of  statistical 

products’ 

Despite  improvements,  prioritisation  remained  a  challenge  throughout  the 
programme resulting in increased pressure on Member State resources. This was 
due in large part to the increased data needs expressed by users of statistics and 
the lack of identification of statistics that would have become less relevant over 
time. To solve the issue, a review of statistical requirements in existing domains 
of European statistics and a new prioritisation mechanism are being implemented 
in  the  statistical  programme  for  2021-2027  set  out  by  the  SMP4.  The  new 
mechanism  is  based  on  four  components:  a  multiannual  action  plan,  reviews, 
user dialogue, and resources/funding. 

As detailed in section b below, the assessment of costs for the ESS showed that 
the total costs for producing statistics decreased slightly between 2013 and 2020, 
as did the number of staff – despite producers meeting an increasing number of 
statistics requests. 

b)  ‘The actions taken by the ESS to reduce the implementation and production 
costs for Member States and to limit the overall burden stemming from the 
statistical projects and fields covered by the programme’ 

Production  costs  and  the  number  of  staff  went  down  while  the  number  of 
datasets  produced  increased.  This  shows  that  the  actions  taken  by  the  ESS  to 
reduce  the  production  costs  for  Member  States  and  to  limit  the  overall  burden 
stemming from the statistical projects and fields covered by the programme have 
been  effective.  The  most  important  actions  included:  (i)  the  implementation  of 
framework statistics regulations, (ii) increased use of administrative and register 
data,  (iii)  new  estimation  methods,  and  (iv)  the  application  of  microdata 
exchanges.  

Table 3: Costs estimates and staff as full time equivalents (FTEs) in the ESS 

Year 
Costs (billion EUR, current prices) 
Staff working in official statistics in the ESS (1000s of FTEs) 
Source: Surveys on cost of statistics in the ESS 

2013 

2017 

2020 

3.1 
49.2 

2.8 
43.1 

3.0 
42.5 

At the same time, qualitative feedback highlighted limitations in terms of priority 
setting  and  in  identifying  statistics  that  would  have  become  less  relevant  over 
time.  In  addition,  concerns  over  the  diminishing  number  of  staff,  coupled  with 

9 

 
 
the  increase  in  the  data  needs  expressed  by  users  for  new  statistics,  suggested 
that issues with production costs and burden may emerge in the future. 

c)  ‘The  progress  on  rendering  access  to  official  statistics  easier  and  more 

user-friendly, including the provision of data on the Eurostat website’ 

The ESP helped render access to official statistics easier and more user-friendly, 
but there is still scope for further improvement.  

In  2014,  Eurostat’s  website  was  completely  redeveloped  and  has  been 
continuously  enhanced  ever  since.  Many  new  electronic  and  interactive 
publications,  visualisation  tools,  mobile  apps  and  tools  offered  for  data 
extraction  have  been  developed  and  added  since  the  ESP  began.  These  tools 
present  data  from  different  statistical  themes  in  an  attractive  and  easy-to-
understand way for everyone to explore and can be easily accessed on Eurostat’s 
website.  

Eurostat has also been active on social media, with its three corporate accounts 
on  Twitter,  Facebook  and  Instagram,  helping  it  to  communicate  in  a  more 
modern way. 

Providing data on the Eurostat website was key but the ease and user-friendliness 
of  the  access  to  these  data  differed  depending  on  the  category  of  users.  While 
data  and  statistics  were  easily  accessible  to  proficient  users  from  the 
Commission,  access  was  more  challenging  for  less  experienced  users  from  the 
general public, due to the complexity of the website’s content. 

d)  ‘The  progress  on  the  improvement  of  data  availability,  including  on  social 

economy activities and on the Europe 2020 indicator 

From  2013  to  2020,  the  ESP  included  activities  to  develop  new  statistics  and 
helped improve data availability, including on social economy activities and on 
the Europe 2020 indicators. On social economy activities, data and statistics on 
population and social conditions, as well as on migration, became more widely 
available,  including  an  increased  disaggregation  by  migratory  status.  Despite 
these  improvements,  gaps  remained  in  terms  of  territorial  disaggregation  of 
social statistics. On the Europe 2020 indicators, Eurostat continuously provided 
comparable,  reliable,  and  timely  statistical  information,  and  work  continued  on 
developing and producing these indicators throughout the programme. While the 
Europe 2020 indicators are only available at the EU and country levels because 
there is no territorial disaggregation of the targets set, some of the data used for 
these indicators are available at regional level. The Europe 2020 indicators set – 
used to monitor the Europe 2020 strategy for growth and jobs between 2010 and 
2020 – was updated yearly and is available for reference periods until 2021. As 
the Europe 2020 strategy has reached the end of its life cycle and since the EU 
aggregate  (28  countries  including  the  United  Kingdom),  for  which  the  Europe 
2020  targets  were  set,  no  longer  exists  in  official  statistics,  the  Europe  2020 
indicators  were  removed  from  the  Eurostat  reference  database  and  archived. 
However, all five areas covered by the Europe 2020 indicators remain part of the 
EU Sustainable Development Goals indicator set and will continue to be updated 
under the heading of ‘Sustainable development indicators’. 

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4. 

RECOMMENDATIONS 

Focus on innovation, new methods and new data sources 

Innovation is key to satisfying the increasing demands for new and timelier statistics 
while reducing production costs and administrative burden. Building on the lessons 
learned from the pilots implemented under the  ESP, work must focus on sustained 
innovation in the most promising areas. Based on the final report of the expert group 
on facilitating the use of new data sources for official statistics and the activities of 
the European Commission, the work started in 2020 to gain access to privately held 
data should be completed. 

Further improve access to European statistics via Eurostat’s website 

The functionality of Eurostat’s website should be further developed by updating the 
search  engine  and  improving  its  navigability,  especially  for  non-expert  users  and 
considering  the  different  user  groups  of  European  Statistics.  The  accessibility  and 
quality of metadata should also be improved.  

Implement the new approach to prioritisation 

In  February  2020,  the  ESS  Committee  underlined  the  importance  of  an  effective 
priority-setting mechanism and endorsed the proposed priority-setting approach with 
its four components: a multiannual action plan (MAP), reviews, user dialogue, and 
resources/funding. The new approach should be thoroughly implemented to support 
the  objective  of  ensuring  the  continued  relevance  of  the  statistics  produced  while 
minimising the burden on respondents and producers. 

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