National and regional economic statistics

Good policy-making requires good information.

Especially in times of economic crisis, it is important to closely monitor economic developments in EU Member States and their regions.

The latest legislation on national and regional accounting dates back to 1995, hence the need to revise the text, bringing it in line with new requirements and methodological advances in statistical research.

The Greens believe that national and regional accounts should be as precise, timely and complete as possible.

It is important that they contain environmental and social data as well as monetary information.

Public companies and financial institutions, like publicly owned banks and insurance companies, fall within the scope of national and regional accounts, so their financial risks should be evaluated as anticipated future costs.

Also, special attention ought to be paid to Public Private Partnerships (PPPs), since they can increase the debt load of many public budgets.

The Greens succeeded in ensuring that some of our key demands were included in the legislation.

Thanks to our amendments, Eurostat will analyse the underlying risks of PPPs and the Commission will regularly report on the effectiveness of that analysis.

The Regulation will trigger progress in social and environmental data processing.

The Greens were unable to make alternatives to monetary measurement legally binding, because the EPP, ALDE, EFD and ECR all rejected our proposal.

However, we did manage to ensure that a reference to measures beyond GDP was incorporated into the non-legally-binding part of the text to demand further action on the part of the Commission.

Our demand that future risk, namely of PPPs, also be factored in encountered similar resistance, with the pro-industry caucus rejecting the suggestion that this be made mandatory. But we did succeed in having it included in the introduction to the text.