Archive:European business statistics manual - introduction to business statistics

This Statistics Explained article is outdated and has been archived - for updated information please see the dynamic version of the European Business Statistics Manual at: European Business Statistics Manual A static full version of the European Business Statistics Manual was published in February 2021: European Business Statistics Manual — 2021 edition

This publication provides a detailed description of European business statistics (EBS), including how they are compiled and the methodologies behind them.

The online manual is divided into 20 articles, each covering a specific part of the statistical process behind EBS.

The manual is forward-looking in the sense that it incorporates the future measures to be introduced by the new Framework Regulation Integrating Business Statistics (FRIBS) ^[1]. FRIBS should be adopted by the Council and European Parliament in 2018-2019.

Until FRIBS is adopted, the EBS manual will be published as a pre-release in light of its preliminary nature. Once FRIBS has been adopted, the manual will be officially launched, and will also appear as a static pdf document.

Full article

Historical background

The first official European business statistics were introduced as part of the ECSC Treaty (1951). Over the next few decades, statistical information expanded to also cover other domains of business statistics, at first on a voluntary basis or by means of Directives. However, the introduction of the Single Market in the early 1990s and the increased need for monitoring and policies meant that the majority of these domains became governed by Regulations ^[2].

More solid foundations were laid in 2000-2010, increasing statistical cooperation and dissemination in the European Union.

The key milestones include:

1953 The Statistics Division for the Coal and Steel Community established;
1958 The European Community founded and the forerunner of Eurostat established;
1959 The present name of Eurostat as the Statistical Office of the European Communities adopted. First publication issued — on agricultural statistics;
1960 First Community Labour Force Survey;
1970 The European System of Integrated Economic Accounts (ESA) published and the general industrial classification of economic activities (NACE) established;
1989 The Statistical Programme Committee established and the first statistical programme (1989-1992) adopted by the Council as an instrument for implementing statistical information policy;
1990 The Council adopts a directive on transmission of confidential data to Eurostat, previously an obstacle to Community statistical work;
1991 Eurostat’s role extended as a result of the agreement on establishment of the European Economic Area and adoption of the Maastricht Treaty. ProdCom Regulation enters into force;
1993 The single market extends Eurostat’s activities, e.g. Intrastat established for statistics on intra-EU trade and the Business Registers Regulation enters into force;
1997 Annual Structural Business Statistics (SBS) Regulation enters into force and statistics added for the first time to the Treaty of Amsterdam and the Statistical Law approved by the Council;
1998 The 11 countries in at the start of EMU (EUR-11) announced, and Eurostat issues the first indicators specific to the EMU area. Regulation on short-term statistics enters into force;
2002 Start of the euro on 1 January, Eurostat supplies key statistics for monetary policy;
2003 Decision adopted on science and technology statistics;
2004 Start of free of charge dissemination of all statistical data except microdata for research purposes;
2005 Commission Recommendation on the independence, integrity and accountability of the national and Community statistical authorities (European Statistics Code of Practice);
2007 Regulation on foreign affiliates statistics enters into force;
2009 New European Regulation governing statistical cooperation in the European Union adopted.

Towards an integrated approach for business statistics

In 2012, Eurostat launched a project aimed at integrating the existing domain-specific Regulations on business statistics by drawing up a cross-cutting legal framework for the collection, compilation, transmission and dissemination of European statistics on the structure, economic activity, competitiveness, global transactions and performance of businesses (hereinafter referred to as FRIBS).

FRIBS takes into account the objectives of ESS Vision 2020 ^[3], the European Statistical Programme 2013-2017, the REFIT Programme ^[4] and the goals set by Commission Juncker’s 10 priorities ^[5], and builds upon the results of the MEETS programme.

Its main policy objectives include:

Streamlining and rationalising European business statistics;
Simplifying the respective European legislation;
Modernising and increasing the efficiency of the production and dissemination of high-quality European business statistics.

FRIBS should be adopted by the Council and European Parliament in 2018-2019.

Besides its legal part, the FRIBS architecture includes the development and introduction of a new cross-domain manual for European business statistics. The new manual will reflect and clarify the future situation to be established by the new framework Regulation. As such, this manual is forward- looking and takes into account expected changes in 2017-2019. The manual itself is non-binding (i.e. not governed by law).

The manual will first be published as an unofficial beta version. Once FRIBS enters into force, the manual will be released as an official publication.

Overview of the statistical production process

The content and format of the manual are based on the international principles as described in the Common Metadata Framework (UN, 2009) and the Generic Statistical Business Process Model (UN, 2013).

The manual focuses on the subsequent phases of the statistical production process ^[6] for business statistics, from first inputs to final statistical outputs. Each article provides a general overview, with hyperlinks offering statistical experts more detailed information.

The main inputs can be grouped as follows:

Scope and main concepts: the business population to which the European business statistics refer is broadly defined, and a description of the main subject areas and topics covered is provided. It also addresses concepts of cost-effective production and several key measures for ensuring/improving comparability and data consistency not only across the various domains of business statistics, but also in relation to accounting frameworks such as national accounts. It includes a special section on globalisation given its impact on statistical methodologies;
Business registers (BR): the national business registers include information on the active business population (i.e. statistical units). They play a central role in the production of business statistics both in terms of the way the statistics are produced and their content and quality. Besides names and addresses of the statistical units, they also cover other characteristics such as start date/closure date of the unit, economic activity (NACE), employment, turnover, legal form, plus formation on control and ownership relations;
EuroGroups register (EGR): this register focuses on multinational enterprise groups and ensures that they and their underlying units in the national business registers are treated the same. Thanks to the EGR, the Member States can have a harmonised picture of multinational enterprise groups operating in the European market, which increases the quality and comparability of several statistics affected by globalisation.
Statistical units (SU): the statistical unit is the entity for which the relevant statistics are compiled. It could be an observation unit in which information is received and statistics are compiled or an analytical unit, which statisticians create by splitting or combining observation units with the help of estimations or imputations in order to supply more detailed and/or homogeneous data than usual. In business statistics, the following statistical units are used: enterprise, enterprise group, kind of activity unit, local unit, local kind of activity unit;
Profiling: method for analysing the legal, operational and accounting structure of an enterprise group at national and global level. Used to establish the statistical units within that group, their links, and the most efficient structures for the collection of statistical data;
Classifications: statistical classifications are used for organising business statistics by dimensions such as economic activity, product/commodity or geographical entity;
Data sources: a variety of data sources are used to produce European business statistics, e.g. surveys, administrative data, Big data, reuse of already collected microdata, and other data sources.

The processing of these inputs towards output contains the following phases:

Processing methods: for the production of business statistics at national level, various methods are available depending on the steps in the process; from the design, determination and sampling of the business population to data collection, data cleaning, treatment of missing values, and finally the calculation of statistical output aggregates. Methods are also available for improving cross-domain consistency at microdata level between the various fields of business statistics;
Data validation standards: data validation assesses the plausibility of data. It includes a decisional procedure ending with the acceptance or refusal of data. This procedure is generally based on rules expressing the acceptable combinations of values. If refused, the relevant Member States are asked to check the data for errors. For efficiency reasons, Member States may opt to already include these EU validation checks in advance as part of their data transmission;
Data exchange standards: SDMX, which stands for Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange, is an international standard used to describe statistical data and metadata, standardise their exchange and improve sharing across organisations; EDAMIS, which stands for Electronic Data files Administration and Management Information System, is the standard tool for data transmission in the ESS. Since 2008, it has been compulsory for the transmission of datasets. It has a number of built-in functionalities such as encryption, (basic) validation, feedback reporting and automatic reminders;
Reference metadata reporting: reference metadata describe the contents of statistical data in terms of concepts, methodologies and quality. The ESS metadata handler, which uses EDAMIS as the transmission tool, supports the production of the reference metadata at national level;
Production of European aggregates: based on the data transmitted by the National Statistical Authorities, Eurostat calculates aggregates at European level. These European aggregates are calculated for the EU (28 Member States) and — depending on the domain — also for the euro area (19 Member States).

The specifications of the output are described by:

Data requirements: these describe the national data that is required from the Member States and cover both the current requirements of existing Regulations as well as new requirements from FRIBS. There are new data requirements for example in the field of services and globalisation.

At the final stage, the outputs are disseminated:

Dissemination of business statistics: this phase covers the publishing process of data produced by data compilers as input and the publication of statistics targeted to user needs as output by means of the various channels that are available. It also provides an overview of future developments for improving dissemination in terms of user needs as set out in ESS Vision 2020 and a number of specific topics such as data revision.

Besides the dissemination of business statistics in the form of tabular aggregated data, the ESS also offers researchers — in a secure/protected manner — the possibility to analyse output data at micro level:

Microdata service for researchers: access to microdata is limited to scientific purposes in the ESS. Precise conditions are set out in a Commission Regulation, with very strict criteria for eligible research entities and research proposals and strict rules on confidentiality (see Statistical Disclosure Control below). The article describes the service as available at Eurostat; it does not include any recommendations for microdata services at national level;

Throughout the entire statistical production chain (from inputs to final statistics) special provisions are in place for safeguarding statistical confidentiality:

Statistical Disclosure Control: Statistical confidentiality is a fundamental principle of official statistics enshrined in the Treaty. NSIs and other national authorities and the Commission (Eurostat) will take all necessary regulatory, administrative, technical and organisational measures to ensure the physical and logical protection of confidential data.

Legal aspects related to the statistical production process are described in:

Legal and non-legal measures: this part highlights the legal and extra-legal measures in business statistics at European level, covering all stages from inputs to final outputs. Extra-legal measures are defined as non-binding agreements outside the legislative scope. It takes into account new measures for improving European business statistics, which are expected to enter into force in 2018-2019 when FRIBS is adopted.

The diagram below displays the various parts of the statistical production process for business statistics and how they are connected ^[7].

The above-mentioned articles of the EBS manual encompass methodological information applicable across the various domains of business statistics. In addition to this cross-domain information, the EBS manual also includes an article providing a detailed list of hyperlinks to domain-specific methodologies:

Detailed domain methodologies ^[8]: overview of detailed domain-specific guides, manuals, handbooks etc. by subject area. The main subject areas are short-term business statistics, country-level business statistics, regional business statistics and statistics on international activities.

Stakeholders

The stakeholders of business statistics can generally be divided into the following categories:

Enterprises and other data providers of statistical information under FRIBS. The methodologies described in this manual are aimed at cost-effective production, providing Member States with effective/efficient data collection processes for assessing enterprises and, in general, data providers in a more consolidated way and after other existing sources have been optimised;
National statistical institutes and other national authorities responsible for the collection and compilation of European business statistics. The processing of business statistics at national level benefits from the improved methodological framework on infrastructure, with improved business registers, better pre-conditions for exploiting existing data and more flexibility at national level;
Data users of statistical information in the European business sector. FRIBS users are very eclectic, with wide-ranging uses. They include for example national and European policymakers, businesses and their national and European associations, researchers, the media and the general public, as well as important ‘internal’ users given that business statistics largely feed the production of macro-economic indicators (such as GDP), the tracing of imbalances and business cycle analysis.

To improve business statistics in the future, Eurostat has consulted the stakeholders, in particular on the changes envisaged by FRIBS. Click here for the report on this consultation.

The metadata and methodologies described in the manual are key to understanding the stakeholders of business statistics, in particular data compilers (see point 2) and data users (see point 3). As to the end users of European statistical data, the Eurostat website reveals that 1 out of every 9 users view metadata, with some 100,000 views a month.

The manual is geared to the needs of data compilers and data users. This article provides a basic insight into how business statistics are produced and is intended for general data users wanting to gain an impression of the ‘statistical melting pot’. The other articles provide key information on a specific phase in the statistical production chain and are intended for expert data users and data compilers. Finally, the hyperlinks in each of the articles give rise to more detailed (and more technical) documents primarily aimed at data compilers.

To improve the manual and its approach to various stakeholders, users will also be consulted.

Acknowledgements

This manual is the result of close collaboration between Eurostat and the FRIBS Task Force, which was set in motion by the Business Statistics Directors Group chaired by Maria Helena FIGUEIRA, Director of Global Business Statistics at Eurostat.

Each article of the manual was drafted by a lead author from Eurostat and then reviewed by members of the FRIBS Task Force.

The lead authors of the various articles of the manual were Aleksandra BUJNOWSKA and Wim KLOEK (Statistical Disclosure Control; Microdata service for researchers), Danny DELCAMBRE and Ana FRANCO LOPES (Classifications), Enrica MORGANTI (Statistical units; Profiling); Irina SCHOEN and Zsolt VOLFINGER (Business registers; EuroGroups Register); Hubertus CLOODT, Edward COOK and Michael WHATLING (Reference metadata; Data exchange: EDAMIS & SDMX), Vincent TRONET (Data validation), and Thom WERKHOVEN (Introduction; Scope and main concepts; Data sources; Processing methods at national level; Data requirements; Production of European aggregates; Dissemination; Legal and non-legal measures; Detailed domain methodologies, and coordination of the EBS manual project).

The FRIBS Task Force — responsible for reviewing, evaluation and general guidance — comprised the following members of the NSIs: Vassiliki BENAKI (Greece), Peter BØEGH NIELSEN (Denmark), Christel COLIN (France), Fred DEMOLLIN and Free FLORQUIN (Netherlands), Reetta MOILANEN (Finland), Alison PRITCHARD (United Kingdom), Katarzyna WALKOWSKA (Poland), Joachim WEISBROD (Germany) and Mari YLÄ-JARKKO (Finland).

In addition, the FRIBS Task Force members from Eurostat that helped create the manual include the Heads of Unit of Directorate G, Jussi ALA-KIHNIA, Ulrich EIDMANN, Michaela GRELL, Thomas JEAGERS, Gregor KYI, Håkan LINDEN, Veijo RITOLA, Petra SNEIJERS, and Salah ZIADE. The FRIBS Task Force was chaired by Merja RANTALA, who was also in charge of the EBS manual.

Valuable reviews and suggestions were provided by Mr Henk NIJMEIJER (Eurostat, National Accounts) on aspects related to national accounts.

The work of the authors and reviewers greatly benefited from comments and suggestions from several other colleagues from the NSIs and within Eurostat.

Numerous Eurostat working groups, task forces and expert groups provided useful comments in the consultations on preliminary drafts of the manual, such as the SBS WG, STS WG, Business Register WG, ProdCom WG, and the Expert Group on Statistical Disclosure Control.

The manual was significantly improved linguistically by the proofreading conducted by Fiona GRAHAM, Darren HEATH, Helen DOBBY and David ALFORD from DGT-EDIT of the Commission.

Special thanks go to Louise CORSELLI-NORDBLAD and Lucie PETERKOVA from the Eurostat Dissemination Unit for providing expert guidance on how to create the manual and how to implement it in Statistics Explained, and to Annika BORTIN (webmaster) for putting the manual on the web and maintaining all its updates.

Contacts

For questions or comments on the EBS manual in general or on this article, please contact

ESTAT-EBS-MANUAL@ec.europa.eu

For questions or comments on a specific article, please refer to the contact point mentioned at the end of each article .

Direct access to

Notes

↑ The official title of FRIBS is ‘Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics’. The official publication is divided into two parts: Basic Act (without annexes) and the Annexes.
↑ Regulations are directly applicable in all Member States, while Directives first need to be transposed into national law. Both legal instruments are legally binding and are generally applicable to all Member States.
↑ ESS Vision 2020 was set up to equip the European Statistical System (ESS) for the future. The ESS is a partnership between the statistical authorities of the Member States and EFTA countries, and the European Commission (Eurostat). ESS Vision 2020 is a joint strategic response by the ESS to the challenges facing official statistics. It was adopted by the ESS Committee in May 2014. ESS Vision 2020 states that data should be used across statistical domains to be able to better analyse emerging phenomena (e.g. globalisation) and to better serve high-impact EU policies. The data output should be based on efficient and robust statistical processes of the ESS.
↑ The REFIT Programme — the European Commission’s regulatory fitness and performance programme for making EU law simpler and reducing unnecessary regulatory costs — identified statistics as one of the priority areas, e.g. for Intrastat and for some other business statistics. Its action plan mentions FRIBS and its counterpart IESS (social statistics) as key pillars of this reform agenda. The FRIBS project envisages the integration of statistical requirements and legal acts in business statistics, streamlining and simplifying them and reducing the burden on businesses.
↑ The 10 priorities of the Juncker Commission are described here: http://ec.europa.eu/priorities/index_en.htm.
↑ However, the manual does not address issues related to (a) how the process is organised in terms of IT or personnel, and (b) the statistical programming process. As such, it does not cover the full PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle for the control and continual improvement of processes and products. In terms of the separate sub-phases of the statistical production processes, the PDCA cycle may well apply, and its use is recommended as good practice for ongoing improvements in statistics.
↑ Please note that the arrow from ‘Compilation’ to ‘Data sources’ represents the re-use of already processed statistical data.
↑ To date, this article and its list of links to detailed domain-specific methodologies is more or less ‘stand-alone’ and is not well integrated with the cross-domain sections of the manual. To achieve a more integrated supply of methodological information, Eurostat plans to create a number of domain-specific articles that follow the same structure and top-down approach as the EBS manual: the EBS domain sections. A first partial prototype of such an EBS domain section has been developed for the short-term statistics domain. This prototype is still incomplete and not yet part of the EBS manual. The prototype will be completed once the manual is launched in Statistics Explained.

[1] The official title of FRIBS is ‘Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics’. The official publication is divided into two parts: Basic Act (without annexes) and the Annexes.

[2] Regulations are directly applicable in all Member States, while Directives first need to be transposed into national law. Both legal instruments are legally binding and are generally applicable to all Member States.

[3] ESS Vision 2020 was set up to equip the European Statistical System (ESS) for the future. The ESS is a partnership between the statistical authorities of the Member States and EFTA countries, and the European Commission (Eurostat). ESS Vision 2020 is a joint strategic response by the ESS to the challenges facing official statistics. It was adopted by the ESS Committee in May 2014. ESS Vision 2020 states that data should be used across statistical domains to be able to better analyse emerging phenomena (e.g. globalisation) and to better serve high-impact EU policies. The data output should be based on efficient and robust statistical processes of the ESS.

[4] The REFIT Programme — the European Commission’s regulatory fitness and performance programme for making EU law simpler and reducing unnecessary regulatory costs — identified statistics as one of the priority areas, e.g. for Intrastat and for some other business statistics. Its action plan mentions FRIBS and its counterpart IESS (social statistics) as key pillars of this reform agenda. The FRIBS project envisages the integration of statistical requirements and legal acts in business statistics, streamlining and simplifying them and reducing the burden on businesses.

[5] The 10 priorities of the Juncker Commission are described here: http://ec.europa.eu/priorities/index_en.htm.

[6] However, the manual does not address issues related to (a) how the process is organised in terms of IT or personnel, and (b) the statistical programming process. As such, it does not cover the full PDCA (Plan-Do-Check-Act) cycle for the control and continual improvement of processes and products. In terms of the separate sub-phases of the statistical production processes, the PDCA cycle may well apply, and its use is recommended as good practice for ongoing improvements in statistics.

[7] Please note that the arrow from ‘Compilation’ to ‘Data sources’ represents the re-use of already processed statistical data.

[8] To date, this article and its list of links to detailed domain-specific methodologies is more or less ‘stand-alone’ and is not well integrated with the cross-domain sections of the manual. To achieve a more integrated supply of methodological information, Eurostat plans to create a number of domain-specific articles that follow the same structure and top-down approach as the EBS manual: the EBS domain sections. A first partial prototype of such an EBS domain section has been developed for the short-term statistics domain. This prototype is still incomplete and not yet part of the EBS manual. The prototype will be completed once the manual is launched in Statistics Explained.

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