European neighbourhood policy
The European neighbourhood policy (ENP) aims at fostering stability, prosperity, and cooperation with its neighbouring countries.
Its objective is to:
- address common challenges
- enhance regional security
- promote sustainable development
- create a more prosperous and stable neighbourhood.
Part of this policy are reliable and comparable statistics, which are in line with European and international norms and standards. They are essential for evidence-based decision-making and good governance at national, regional, and international level.
ENP-East
The ENP-East region refers to 6 non-EU countries in the EU’s eastern neighbourhood covered by the EU’s Eastern partnership:
- Armenia
- Azerbaijan
- Belarus
- Georgia
- Moldova
- Ukraine.
In June 2022, based on the European Commission’s opinions on their EU membership applications, the leaders of the 27 EU countries gave Moldova and Ukraine candidates status to become EU members. In December 2023, Georgia also became a candidate country.
Since March 2022, statistical cooperation with Belarus has been suspended.
Eurostat provides statistical assistance in the ENP-East region to the partner countries’ NSIs by
- organising training courses, meetings, and workshops
- encouraging the exchange of good practice
- transfering statistical know-how
- providing information on European and international norms and standards.
Eurostat organises global assessments, peer reviews, and sector assessments in the partner countries.
Eurostat’s first regional statistical programme within the Eastern partnership region since 2000 was implemented from 2019 to 2022.
The overall objective of this programme was to
- strengthen the national statistical systems of the partner countries
- strengthen their ability to develop, produce, and disseminate high-quality statistics
- reinforce their independence from political and other undue influences.
Its activities included training, workshops, study visits, virtual groups, expert missions, pilot surveys, and publications.
ENP-South
The ENP-South refers to 10 non-EU countries in the EU’s southern neighbourhood:
- Algeria
- Egypt
- Israel
- Jordan
- Lebanon
- Libya
- Morocco
- Palestine (this designation shall not be construed as recognition of a State of Palestine and is without prejudice to the individual positions of the EU Member States on this issue)
- Syria
- Tunisia.
Cooperation with Syria is currently suspended.
Eurostat provides statistical assistance to partner countries’ NSIs by
- organising training courses, meetings, and workshops
- encouraging the exchange of good practice
- transfering statistical know-how
- providing information on European and international norms and standards.
Eurostat also organises peer reviews and sector assessments.
The Medstat programme is a regional statistical cooperation programme for the EU’s southern neighbourhood, financed from the European neighbourhood instrument and managed by Eurostat. It started in the late 1990s. The fifth phase, Medstat V, was launched in 2022 and will run until the end of 2025.
The overall objective is to promote evidence-based decision-making and to foster democratic development. To achieve this goal, the programme aims at improving the availability and visibility of robust, reliable, and timely statistical data in the ENP-South countries.
Through Medstat V, expertise is shared and statistical support is provided to:
- promote the harmonisation of statistics in line with EU and international standards in 6 priority domains
- business registers, business statistics, circular economy and informal economy
- trade and international investments
- migration statistics
- inclusiveness: gender and labour statistics
- energy, transport and sustainable development
- climate action and biodiversity
- advocate for the harmonisation of statistics in 5 horizontal areas to ensure consistency and adherence to the EU and international standards:
- quality
- IT and information systems
- communication and relations with users
- administrative and new sources
- human resources management
- provide training on statistical methods and tools
- ensure availability and visibility of a wide range of data.
The Medstat IV programme started in 2016 and ended in 2019. It underpinned the EU's cooperation with the ENP-South countries in the area of statistics. The priority statistical domains were statistics related to business and business registers, energy, external trade and balance of payments, labour market, migration, transport. The horizontal issues of quality in statistics, gender statistics and visibility of statistics were also covered.