Brussels, 22/02/2008 (Agence Europe) - In Strasbourg on Wednesday 20 February, the European Parliament adopted (by 579 votes to 41, with 18 abstentions) the report by Ona Juknevièienë (ALDE, Lithuania), somewhat amending the proposal on censuses of the population and housing. MEPs, thus, gave the green light to regular collection of comparable information at European level on the population and housing, says a European Parliament press release, stressing that these censuses will fully meet data protection requirements. For that reason, MEPs removed a series of data which were to have been gathered according to the Commission proposal.
The amended proposal allowed agreement to be found on first reading. The text adopted takes account of the compromise reached in informal negotiations between the rapporteur, the Commission, and the Council. This means that after formal adoption by the Council, the regulation will come into effect immediately.
How many people live in the EU? Which regions have the youngest populations? Which is the largest city? Who live in detached houses, or in skyscrapers? To be able to collect this information, the EP has approved the regulation setting up regular censuses of the population and of housing throughout the EU.
Parliament has decided the first census will take place in 2011, and, thereafter, at the start of each decade. Information will be gathered at national, regional and local levels.
MEPs have also asked member states to provide the Commission (Eurostat) with data on a range of compulsory topics regarding people's demographic, social and economic, family and housing characteristics. However, a range of issues on which, under the Commission's initial proposal, member states were to gather information has been removed (these issues are contained in the annex to the proposal). MEPs say in the annex to the text adopted that the issues to be covered in the population and housing census should include: usual place of residence, gender, age, legal marital status, country or place of birth, county of citizenship, previous place of residence, date of arrival at current place of residence or usual place of residence one year before the census, place in the household, place in the family, type of family nucleus, current employment situation, profession, sector (area of economic activity), education level, residence abroad and year of immigration (from 1980), type of dwelling, occupation regime in traditional housing, number of occupants, useable surface area and/or number of rooms per dwelling, era of construction of dwellings, condition of the dwelling, toilets and bathrooms.
Member states are also invited to take all necessary measures to comply with data protection requirements. MEPs removed a paragraph in the Commission's proposal which, in addition to aggregate information in the form of tables, provided for a sample of anonymous micro-information. These were individual statistical files amended, in line with current best practice, to minimise the risk of identification of the statistical units to which they refer, the Parliament says.
Parliament also noted that the last census of the population and housing in the European Union, based on a “gentleman's agreement” among member states, was carried out in 2001. However, the Commission says, reference dates vary widely from March 1999 (in France) to May 2002 (in Poland) making comparisons difficult. (G.B.)