COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF THE EVALUATION Accompanying the document Proposal for a 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
Date: 2023-01-20
Institutions: European Commission, Eurostat
Subjects: EU statistics, census, data collection, exchange of information, family, household, population census, population statistics, statistical method

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  EN 

   EUROPEAN COMMISSION  Brussels, 20.1.2023  SWD(2023) 14 final  COMMISSION STAFF WORKING DOCUMENT  EXECUTIVE SUMMARY OF THE EVALUATION  Accompanying the document Proposal for a  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     {COM(2023) 31 final} - {SEC(2023) 38 final} - {SWD(2023) 11 final} - {SWD(2023) 12 final} - {SWD(2023) 13 final} - {SWD(2023) 15 final}  
 
 
Introduction and background 

Under Article 9 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), 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  (TFEU),  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. 

This document summarises the results of the evaluation of: (i) the mandatory and voluntary 
elements of European decennial statistics from the censuses of population and housing; and 
(ii)  the  annual  statistics  on  demography  and  international  migration.  The  evaluation  was 
undertaken  back-to-back  with  an  impact  assessment  in  the  context  of  a  planned 
redevelopment  of  European  statistics  on  population1,  which  aims  to  introduce  a  single 
modernised legal framework with the flexibility to meet evolving user needs for statistics.  

Although  different  voluntary  collections  of  population  data  from  Member  States  had  taken 
place  during  several  decades  since  1960,  these  were  characterised  at  Community  level  by 
poor  timeliness,  incompleteness  and  a  lack  of  harmonisation.  Since  2003,  the  Commission 
has  worked  towards  improving  these  statistics,  leading  to  Parliament  and  the  Council 
adopting  three  legal  acts  to  cover  demographic  and  migration  statistics,  as  well  as  the 
population and housing census: 

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

-  Regulation (EC) No 862/2007 on Community statistics on migration and international 
protection, specifically Article 3 relating to statistics on international migration flows, 
migrant stocks and acquisitions of citizenship2; 

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

The evaluation  is  intended to  assess  how far this intervention and its associated legal  bases 
achieved  their  objectives  with  regard  to  European  statistics  on  demography,  international 
migration and population and housing censuses. Success in this respect is to be measured by 
looking at: (i) the initial needs for statistics at the time of the intervention (baseline situation 
around 2005); and (ii) the ongoing evolution of user needs.  

Evaluation methodology 

The evaluation assessed the current legal framework using the following six criteria: 

1 https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives/12958-Data-collection-European-

statistics-on-population-ESOP-_en. 

2 Articles 4 to 7 of  Regulation (EC) No 862/2007 cover statistics on asylum and  managed migration of third-

country nationals. These statistics are outside of the scope of this evaluation.  

 
 
 
 
                                                           
 

relevance  –  both  to  the  initial  baseline  situation  and  to  the  evolution  of  needs  until 
today 

  effectiveness 
  efficiency 
  coherence – internal and external  
  EU added value 
  statistical quality. 

The  evaluation  addressed  two  broad  issues:  (i)  how  the  statistics  are  produced  from  data 
source to publication; and (ii) how the published European statistics are received by users. 

Information was gathered by desk research and by consultation activities. The desk research 
focused on analysis of legal, contextual, methodological and technical background documents 
relevant to the intervention. The consultation activities including an open public consultation 
targeted  different  stakeholder  groups:  statistics  producers  including  national  statistical 
institutes;  statistics  users  within  the  Commission;  and  other  statistics  users.  A  single 
stakeholder  consultation  was  carried  out  for  this  evaluation  and  back-to-back  impact 
assessment. 

There were limitations to the analytical model used to estimate costs and benefits. These were 
due to difficulties in quantifying incremental costs cleanly against the hypothetical baseline 
(2005  situation),  and  thus  in  quantitatively  assessing  the  intervention’s  efficiency. 
Furthermore, it was not possible to quantify or monetise costs on data users or on individual 
persons, as well as benefits in general, due to the nature of these impacts. This led to a lack of 
data and ambiguity and variability across Member States and stakeholder groups.  

Results of the evaluation 

Successful outcomes of the intervention 

The intervention and the current  legal  framework based on the three acts  listed above have 
achieved significant overall improvements to European population statistics in relation to the 
2005 baseline. 

EU  added  value  has  been  increased  significantly.  This  has  been  achieved  through 
considerable improvements at EU level in  

  completeness and comparability; 
  coherence and consistency; 
 

timeliness. 

All  EU  policy/institutional  topical  needs  for  population  statistics  known  prior  to  the 
intervention have been delivered on. 

The  intervention  thus  improved  both  the  statistical  framework’s  effectiveness  and  its 
efficiency  and  coherence.  These  positive  results  were  confirmed  by  a  majority  of  opinions 
collected across all stakeholder groups in the consultation activities.  

 
 
 
 
Weaknesses of the intervention 

The current legal framework… 

… does not fully ensure sufficiently coherent, comparable and complete statistics.   

Although common definitions are set for key statistical concepts, there is often flexibility in 
how Member States select and implement them. In particular, Member States currently apply 
three  conceptually  different  definitions  of  the  population  base  (usual  residence,  registered 
residence,  legal  residence)  that  are  allowed,  sometimes  using  different  definitions  for 
different  datasets.  This  central  issue  to  population  statistics  has  caused  a  lack  of 
comparability  and  coherence  in  the  data  from  different  Member  States,  reducing  the  data 
collections’  EU  added  value.  Moreover,  the  absence  of  provisions  on  time  series  revision 
reduces the comparability over time. 

Certain  data  gaps where the mandatory  statistics do not  fully meet  user  needs can be  filled 
with data supplied by Member States on a voluntary basis. However, the voluntary nature of 
these data results in incomplete EU-level statistics that may not be coherent with mandatory 
statistics. This reduces the cost-effectiveness of voluntary statistics in terms of their EU value 
added  and  thus  indicates  the  importance  of  these  statistics  being  mandatory  in  the  future. 
Voluntary collections may be useful initially when new statistics are being developed, but a 
clear legal base is necessary for their full implementation as European official statistics. 

…  does  not  ensure  sufficient  availability  of  population  data  in  terms  of  timeliness 
and frequencies of data publications. 

Existing  legislation  covers  only  annual  demographic  and  migration  statistics,  with  most 
datasets to be provided only within 12 months from the reference period, and the decennial 
census statistics with EU datasets to be provided only within 27 months from the end of the 
census  year.  These  frequencies  and  timeliness  issues  remain  below  user  expectations  and 
below national statistical publications and other international statistics transmissions across a 
majority of Member States. Under the current legislation, the legal deadlines and frequencies 
cannot  be  improved,  e.g.  to  cover  other  multi-annual  population  and  housing  statistics,  or 
infra-annual population statistics such as those recently developed for mortality.  

… fails to capture characteristics and details of topics or groups that have become 
politically and societally relevant during the past decade. 

The existing legislation focuses on data needs corresponding to policy priorities current at the 
time  the  intervention  was  developed.  Over  time,  priorities  have  changed  and  the  available 
population  statistics  no  longer  adequately  cover  policy-relevant  characteristics,  topics  or 
population groups. Most notably, the gaps confirmed in the stakeholder consultation revolve 
around  characteristics  of  politically  relevant  topics  and  groups.  Examples  include  housing 
data  for  the  Green  Deal,  migrants  and  EU  mobility,  urban/rural  population,  and  vulnerable 
minority groups for non-discrimination and fundamental rights policies. There are also gaps 
relating  to  the  statistics’  insufficient  geographic  granularity,  including  most  notably 
functional  typologies  and  georeferenced  data  for  urban/rural  integration  and  cross-border 
analysis. 

… is not flexible enough to adapt to evolving policy needs and to enable the use of 
new sources in the Member States and at EU level. 

 
 
Compounding the weaknesses considered above, the existing legislation lacks the flexibility 
to  enable  it  to  adapt  to  meet  new  and  emerging  needs  for  statistics.  New  data  sources  in 
Member States  and at  EU level  (in particular, administrative data including interoperability 
systems  and  privately  held  data)  also  offer  potential  improvements  in  terms  of  costs  and 
timeliness, but the current legislation does not support the adoption of these developments.  

Finally,  the  evaluation  has  identified  REFIT3-relevant  redundancies  regarding  compliance, 
enforcement and monitoring. These are due to  the current  legislation  being scattered across 
three  legal  acts  that  were  not  developed  together.  Moreover,  the  current  status  quo  of 
producing many voluntary datasets with high but not full completeness across Member States 
leads to significantly reduced efficiency at EU level. 

Conclusions 

Overall,  the  current  intervention  resulted  in  significant  improvements  over  the  baseline 
situation  in  2005.  However,  there  are  weaknesses  in  the  legal  framework  such  as  poor 
timeliness  and  excessively  loose  definitions  of  key  concepts,  resulting  in  a  lack  of 
harmonisation. 

Other weaknesses have become apparent over time, through the lack of flexibility in the legal 
framework, which in turn results in the statistics losing relevance due to an inability to meet 
evolving user needs.  

3 The Commission’s Regulatory Fitness and Performance Programme; COM(2012) 746.