Page 322 - Special Topic Session (STS) - Volume 2

STS496 Pilar M.
It functions as a network, with EUROSTAT playing a leading role in
harmonizing statistics in cooperation with national statistical authorities.
The roots of the ESS can be found in the Statistical Service of the Coal and
Steel Community, created in 1952 with the task to harmonize statistics that
were already available at national level and had been collected for national
purposes. A long journey has been travelled since. In 1992 the European
Economic Area was created with the aim of extending the EU single market to
non EU countries, in particular, to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA)
countries. The foundational Agreement of EEA establishes the need to
produce and disseminate comparable statistics for describing and monitoring
all relevant economic, social and environmental aspects of the EEA and to
enact statistical legislation similar to that passed in the EU.
Three out of the four current EFTA countries (Iceland, Lichtenstein and
Norway) have joined the EEA. The fourth, Switzerland, although not being part
of the EEA, has signed in 2007 a number of bilateral agreements with the EU,
concerning access to and harmonization of statistics. As a result,
representatives of the four EFTA countries attend the meetings of the EES with
participation as active as the representatives of any of the 28 UE Member
States.
Moreover, Albania, the Republic of North Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia
and Turkey are candidate countries, and are actively involved in adjusting their
national statistical systems to the rules and practices of the ESS, so that they
benefit from the application of some of the safeguards that will be described.

3. EU legislation as a safeguard
Legislation is a fundamental instrument for preserving independence in
the statistical production. The EU is a very complex supranational organization,
embodying countries of very different sizes and with very different traditions,
practices and administration systems. It works on the principle of subsidiarity,
which rules out EU intervention when an issue can be dealt with effectively by
Member States, but specifies that the EU is justified in exercising its powers
when Member States are unable to achieve the objectives of a proposed
action satisfactorily and added value can be provided if the action is carried
out at EU level.
Although Member States have national Statistical Acts guaranteeing
functional independence, it sometimes happens that national legislation is not
sufficiently specific in describing the conditions under which this
independence has to be effectively implemented, and eventually some
problems have arisen. Therefore the ESS comes to the rescue by providing
more effective legislation at EU level. When deemed necessary, the ESS
presents to the European Parliament and the Council regulations that, once
approved, are of compulsory application in all Member States.

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