The second meeting of the Council Working Party on Statistics under the Belgian Presidency took place on Wednesday 31 January 2024. The meeting was chaired by Mr Olivier Goddeeris and was shortened to half a day due to the European summit that was held in the buildings of the Council of the European Union on 1 February.
The first item on the agenda was the discussion of the second presidency compromise proposal on European Union labour market statistics on businesses. Per article block, the Chair explained the changes that were made compared to the first presidency compromise proposal. After that, the Member States were given the floor to share their views on the proposal. The Commission (Eurostat) was also given the floor to explain or clarify certain aspects. There were discussions on articles concerning definitions, sources and methods, data requirements and statistical units and statistical population.
The Belgian Presidency will now finalise the text and go to COREPER to ask for a mandate to start interinstitutional negotiations.
The meeting continued with information on the state of play of the negotiations in trilogues concerning three statistical dossiers, i.e. the regulation on European statistics on population and housing (ESOP), regulation 223/2009 on European statistics and European environmental economic accounts (EEEA). Per file, Member States were again given the opportunity to express their main views and concerns. In a nutshell, this is the latest update on the three files:
- Regulation on European statistics on population and housing (ESOP): on 26 January, the Belgian Presidency launched a written consultation on several important elements of the proposal. During the meeting, some Member States expressed their opinion about the landing zones presented by the presidency in view of the ongoing negotiations.
Based on the feedback received from the Member States, the presidency is exploring various ways on how to proceed with this file. - Regulation 223/2009 on European statistics: a provisional political agreement was reached with the European Parliament during the political trialogue of 1 February 2024.
- European environmental economic accounts (EEEA): On the basis of the political agreement that was reached on 5 December 2023 under the Spanish Presidency, a compromise was found with the European Parliament on the last technical issues.
Finally, under any other business, the presidency provided information on the state of affairs of other files of interest.
