Page 387 - Invited Paper Session (IPS) - Volume 2

IPS297 Sophie Limpach et al.

The Early-Warning System
Sophie Limpach, August Götzfried, Håkan Linden, John Verrinder
European Commission, Luxembourg

Abstract
Economic decisions of Multinational Enterprise Groups (MNEs) regarding their
place of incorporation, ownership of their assets and economic control may
result in sizeable revisions of European business statistics, National Accounts,
and Balance of Payment statistics. Recording such globalisation events in a
timely and consistent way across all the EU Member States concerned and
ensuring comparable and consistent European statistics is a serious challenge.
A close coordination between the Member States affected by such
globalisation events and Eurostat is therefore needed. For this purpose, the
Early-Warning System (EWS) was set up within the European Statistical System
(ESS) as a light and easy-to-manage network. The system should lead to a
consistent statistical treatment of major restructuring/globalisation cases of
MNEs in European statistics. So far, more than 10 specific restructuring cases
have been treated in the EWS. Based on the experiences gathered, the system
will be further developed in 2019/2020 (with a better infrastructure and more
methodological guidance).

Keywords
Globalisation; Multinational Enterprise Groups; Restructurings

1. Introduction
Major restructuring events of MNEs in 2016 and 2017 challenged the quality
and consistency of European business statistics, National Accounts and
Balance of Payment Statistics. As a consequence, Eurostat developed the first
ideas for establishing an EWS, which were then discussed in several ESS
groups, such as the Joint task force of directors of business and
macroeconomic statistics on globalisation.
The European Statistical System Committee in its meeting of February 2018
supported the setting up of the EWS as a light developing system based on
voluntary co-operation and learning by doing and fully respecting the
Regulation on European statistics [Regulation (EC) 223/2009] on the exchange
of confidential data. Several EU Member States underlined the importance of
enhancing the cooperation in this regard with the European System of Central
Banks (ESCB) especially at the national level.

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