Brussels, 28/01/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Tuesday 27 January, the Ecofin Council approved the agreement reached with the European Parliament on new rules aiming to guarantee the quality and reliability of European statistics.
The regulation tightens up the governance of the European statistical system (ESS) - a partnership between the EU statistical office (Eurostat), the national statistics institutes and other national authorities with responsibility for statistics - which aims to provide reliable and comparable statistics at EU level.
Under the regulation, the heads of the national statistics institutes would not be allowed to give or receive instructions from the national governments or other bodies. They would be authorised to decide on the internal management of their own institute and make observations on the budget allocated to it. Their appointment would have to be transparent and based on professional criteria. (MB)