The meeting discussed the implementation of the Regulation on Structural Business Statistics (SBS). It was recognised that there is a good level of compliance with the SBS Regulation by most Member States and Candidate Countries. This has led to good regular dissemination of SBS data to users. The meeting commented on the draft report to the Council and the Parliament for the three yearly follow up, where this progress will be reported on. The draft Commission regulations implementing the two new annexes of SBS and the environmental variables (European Parliament and Council Regulation (EC) No 2056/2002) was also discussed. It was decided to draft a quality action programme for SBS and a task force was set up for that purpose.

The Statistical Programme Committee voted in September 2002 in favour of a strategy to develop better structural statistics for the services sector. The meeting now considered the progress on the different ongoing development projects, namely business services, business demography, statistics on foreign affiliates, demand for services and inter-enterprise relations. Furthermore, several topics for new ad-hoc surveys were identified, such as ‘knowledge management in enterprises’, ‘ICT investments’ and ‘Financing of innovation driven SMEs’. These topic had to be further explored before any decision can be taken. As to a legal basis for ad-hoc surveys, further reflection was also considered necessary. The meeting discussed feasible changes of Annex 1 of the SBS regulation to better reflect the services sector, such as more detailed breakdown of the business services, inclusion of audio-visual services, certain environmental services and other services in M, N and O of NACE Rev 1. Additional variables to be covered by Annex 1 was also discussed. Most countries supported these changes, although difficulties for particularly parts of M, N and O of NACE, Rev 1 were identified, due to the mixture of market activity and public administration.