Quality

Reports 

Quality reports provide insights into the quality of the statistics that Eurostat publishes about international trade in services statistics. The data quality can be evaluated against indicators covering the following components:

• relevance
• accuracy
• timeliness and punctuality
• accessibility and clarity
• comparability and coherence

The goal of these reports is to provide users with information on different factors that could impact the quality of the statistics. Users can subsequently independently assess the data quality.

Asymmetries 

Asymmetries between ‘mirror data’ are a common issue of all trade statistics. Asymmetries occur when the reported data by one country do not correspond to the mirror data reported by the partner country.

For example, country A reports exports of 100 machines to country B, and country B reports imports of 60 machines from country A. Typical reasons for asymmetries are:

• differences in the specific methodology used
• differences in the population (samples)
• errors in the geographical allocation
• other aspects, such as outdated coefficients or weights, and biased estimations

Asymmetries create problems for users, as in the absence of any other information they cannot be sure which of the 2 asymmetrical values should be used. Eurostat regularly measures and reports on bilateral asymmetries to help with this issue.

In March 2022, Eurostat launched an asymmetry resolution mechanism (ARM) for ITSS. The mechanism aims to directly address the most important asymmetries among the data of EU member states. The ARM complements other activities that are going on in parallel, such as regular quality reporting and ongoing methodological work.