Palermo, 19/09/2002 (Agence Europe) - Romano Prodi introduced himself to the Conference of Directors General and the presidents of the national statistics institutes in Palermo on Thursday as "a big consumer of statistics". He considers "a few, well-chosen, well-presented figures can be more helpful and much more enlightening than hours of talk". He stressed the crucial role of quality statistics and of their correct dissemination in a democratic system, using two examples as a basis for his argument: Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) and enlargement. The president of the European Commission mainly insisted that, in these two fields, policies must be founded on a specific and detailed knowledge of the fundamental data, which means that data must be "both reliable and easily comparable at EU level", an objective that calls for "harmonisation of survey methods, working tools and organisation". On the question of EMU, Mr Prodi mainly insisted that the decisions and recommendations regarding coordination of tax and budgetary policies, whether addressed to the EU as a whole or to the Member States individually, must be based on reliable and precise statistics. He went on to underline "the challenge facing us now is to develop a genuine system of statistics that incorporates both national and Community dimensions". Regarding enlargement, the Commission president said in substance that, "if we want to express an informed judgement, we must (…) bear a whole string of factors in mind, ranging from population to level of education, from absolute size of the economy to growth rate". He went on to conclude that "the next challenge facing statistics is their quality rather than their quality". (Mr Prodi welcomed the participation at this kind of meeting, for the first time, of representatives of the central statistics institutes of the Western Balkans).