The European Statistics Code of Practice was first adopted by the Statistical Programme Committee (SPC) in 2005. The Code was revised by the European Statistical System Committee (ESSC) in 2011 and 2017; the ESSC endorsed the latter revision on 16 November 2017. The revised Code has 16 principles concerning the institutional environment, statistical processes and statistical outputs. The Code aims to ensure that statistics produced within the European Statistical System (ESS) are relevant, timely and accurate, and that they comply with the principles of professional independence, impartiality and objectivity. A set of indicators of best practices and standards for each principle provides guidance and a reference for reviewing the implementation of the Code. We are currently working on the other language versions and they will become available shortly.

The new European Statistical Governance Advisory Board (ESGAB) team started its 3-year term on 1st February 2018.

The members are: Enrico Giovannini (Chair), Kai Carstensen, Bart De Moor, Mireille Elbaum, Jaume Garcia Villar, Frances Ruane and Algirdas Šemeta.

More information on the new ESGAB team can be found here.

In its 2017 Annnual report the European Statistical Governance Advisory Board (ESGAB) urges more to be done by European statistical authorities to ensure the public at large are aware of the high standards in place for European statistics. Such awareness-raising is essential in the face of conflicting or erroneous data from a range of non-official sources.

“Statistics from unreliable or biased sources can be easily spread through social media to promote specific interests and to mislead the public. So it is crucial that citizens are aware that the European statistics published by Eurostat and national statistical authorities are underpinned by the European Statistics Code of Practice, which promotes professional independence, objectivity and impartiality” says Martti Hetemäki, Chair of ESGAB.

The latest annual report of the European Statistical Governance Advisory Board (ESGAB) has just been published. It provides an overview of the implementation of the European Statistics Code of Practice in Eurostat and in the European Statistical System as a whole. It also discusses some of the current challenges faced by the ESS, such as the use of multiple data sources and maintaining trust in European statistics.

Martti Hetemäki has been heading ESGAB since 1 February 2015. Although he is relatively new to the team, he is no stranger to ESGAB. He was personally involved in its creation in 2005 through his role as chair of the Statistics Sub-Committee of the EU’s Economic and Financial Committee.

ESGAB just published its 2015 Annual Report with a press release in 23 languages.

The report will also be discussed in an event organised by the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS) on Thursday 10 December 2015  at 13.15-14.30 - "Statistics cost money, but then so do bad decisions".

The European Statistical Governance Advisory Boards (ESGAB)  unanimously supports the "Statement of the Members of the European Statistical System on their commitment to professional independence of statistical authorities and the credibility of European statistics and on statistics in Greece" adopted by the European Statistical System Committee last week.

The European Statistical Governance Advisory Board (ESGAB) in a new composition published its first opinion on the situation in Greece.

While ESGAB welcomed the newly-elected Greek Government's pledge to fight corruption and to continue to modernise its public administration, as stated in the Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis's letter of February 2015 to the Eurogroup,  ESGAB highlighted a number of critical issues. These were raised in the second annual report of the Good Practice Advisory Committee (GPAC) and in the recently published peer review report on compliance with the European Statistics Code of Practice and the coordination role of ELSTAT. You can find the opinion here.

Newly appointed ESGAB members

The European Parliament and the Council have appointed new members for the next 3 years from 1 February 2015 onwards for ESGAB.  

The new ESGAB chair is Mr Martti Hetemäki, former chair of the EFC Sub-Committee on Statistics and currently permanent state secretary in the Ministry of Finance of Finland. The composition of Board is now as follows:

• Enrico Giovannini is an Italian economist and statistician, member of the Club of Rome. From April 2013 to February 2014 he was Minister of Labour and Social Policies in the Italian Government. From August 2009 to April 2013 he was President of the Italian Statistical Institute (ISTAT).
• Günter Kopsch, senior consultant, was previously, he was a departmental Director, responsible for programme planning, international relations and cooperation, methods and data quality, dissemination, and press office, at the Federal Statistical Office of Germany.
• Pilar Martín-Guzmán is Professor of Statistics and Applied Economics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She was President (Chief Statistician) of the Spanish National Statistics Institute from 1996 to 2000.
• Patricia O'Hara is chair of the Ireland's National Statistics Board and is Honorary Professor at the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis, National University of Ireland.
• Lars Lyberg former Head of the Research and Development Department at Statistics Sweden and is currently Professor Emeritus at the Department of Statistics, Stockholm University. He is the founder of the Journal of Official Statistics.
• Marius Profiroiu has been, since 2010, Dean of the Faculty of Administration and Public Management at ASE Bucharest, and is, since May 2014, President of NISPACee (Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe).

The peer review to assess Eurostat's compliance with the European Statistics Code of Practice was carried out by the European Statistical Governance Advisory Board (ESGAB). The resulting report, which qualifies also as ESGAB's annual report 2014 to the European Parliament and Council, has now been published.

The peer review exercise on compliance with the Code, coordination within national statistical systems and cooperation/level of integration is ongoing in the 32 Member States and EFTA/EEA countries. Like at the national level, ESGAB's peer review report is based on Eurostat's replies to self-assessment questionnaires and an on-site visit which took place in April with staff in Luxembourg and  stakeholders in Brussels. 

ESGAB has found Eurostat to be a well-functioning statistical office. Its strengths lie in the legal instruments available, which have been reinforced in the spirit of the Code, its commitment to quality, its enforcement of harmonised methodologies and its highly qualified work force.

However, the good can get better. The 16 recommendations for improvement address four main areas: appointment and dismissal procedures for top management and implementation of the three-layer-legislative architecture, quality and methodology, dissemination and communication as well as coordination. Eurostat was consulted on the report in course of the autumn. Eurostat's views diverged from ESGAB's assessment as regards the appointment and dismissal procedures of Eurostat's Director General. The new ESGAB team starting its work in February will discuss the improvement actions provided by Eurostat on how to implement the accepted recommendations of the peer review report.

The outgoing ESGAB Chair, Mr Thomas Wieser, will present the report in the next meeting of the European Statistical System Committee on Thursday 13 November. The report, in English, French and German, as well as a press release in 22 official languages, are available on the ESGAB website.

ESGAB supports the "V6 joint statement calling authorities responsible for recruiting or dismissing practices to act in line with the principles of the European Statistics Code of Practice" of 10 October 2014.

V6 is the association of six statistical societies from Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The European Statistical Governance Advisory Board (ESGAB) has issued today an Opinion on the compliance of senior appointments procedures in the German Bundesländer with the European Statistics Code of Practice.

ESGAB acknowledges the efforts made in Germany to promote the Code, bearing in mind the legal provisions of a federal system that may set limits to the federal government to enforce the good practices set out in the Code at level of Bundesländer.

The statistical offices in the Länder are substantial producers of European statistics which need to be produced in compliance with the Code of Practice. Nevertheless, ESGAB has been observing that the recruitment procedures for Heads of the Office in some Länder do not appear to be in line with the Code's first principle on professional independence.

The European Statistical Governance Advisory Board (ESGAB) does not assess the interpretation of accounting norms and standards, but focuses on the credibility of European statistics.

ESGAB has issued an opinion on upholding the principles of the European Statistics Code of Practice in the implementation of Regulation (EU) No 549/2013 on the European system of national and regional accounts in the European Union (ESA 2010).

Today and tomorrow, members of the European Statistical Governance Advisory Board (ESGAB) will be visiting Eurostat, starting the second round of ESS peer review visits. Eurostat's Deputy Director-General Marie Bohatá explained the importance of peer reviews to the ESS website team.

What is the background to the forthcoming round of the ESS peer reviews?

It starts with the European Statistics Code of Practice, adopted in 2005 and revised in 2011. The Code sets the standards for developing, producing and disseminating European statistics and contains 15 principles. It is not a legally binding instrument, however, with its adoption ESS members voluntarily agreed to abide by a number of important statistical norms and the peer reviews are designed to monitor overall compliance with the Code.

The European Statistical Governance Advisory Board, established in 2008, is charged with providing an independent overview of the implementation of the Code of Practice by Eurostat and the ESS as a whole. For this reason, it has now been tasked with carrying out a peer review of our organisation, which in the first round of reviews, undertaken in 2006-2008, was done by a group of peers consisting of a representative from the IMF and two Member States.

How different is the second round of peer reviews from the first one?

Members of the ESS are committed to respecting the principles of the Code and are jointly working towards its full implementation. While the first round of peer reviews focused on raising awareness of the Code, enhancing a sense of its ownership across the ESS and boosting its implementation, the next round will go much further. This is to reflect the new political and economic developments around us and the growing importance of high quality European statistics for evidence-based decision making.

The new peer review round, which was successfully piloted in Iceland and Slovakia last year, will cover all principles of the Code and underline the important coordinating role the NSIs play in the individual Member States. To obtain a fully independent perspective, the reviews will be conducted in Member States by an external contractor and the peers will be equipped with audit-inspired powers. All the answers to the self-assessment questionnaires will, for instance, need to be supported by suitable evidence.

 
Finally, could you briefly tell us what the peer review of Eurostat will look like?

In the last few weeks, the reviewers received three questionnaires filled in by Eurostat. A dedicated Task Force Peer Review consolidated their rich inputs. Today and tomorrow, ESGAB will be meeting our senior and middle managers and also a number of junior staff members, representing a variety of our directorates.

 
As a next step, in Brussels, Directors-General from a number of NSIs and users of Eurostat's statistics, including other Commission DGs, the ECB and also journalists, will be interviewed. Two observers from the NSIs will be present during the whole peer review and will report to the ESSC in May on the conduct of the exercise.

Following this, in the next couple of weeks the reviewers will be working on a draft report, which should be ready this summer. This draft will also include recommendations for improvements in the way we work, in order to better comply with the principles of the Code.

Eurostat will have the opportunity to comment on the report and, once the report has been finalised by ESGAB, we will have a month to propose improvement actions. All Eurostat staff will be involved. The peer review report and Eurostat's improvement actions will be published separately acknowledging their different ownership.

I would like to thank all colleagues involved in the preparation of this peer review exercise!