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Concept Note

High-Level Meeting of Directors-General and Presidents of NSIs in the European Statistical System on the use of privately held data under the revised Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European Statistics

Warsaw, Poland 10-11 April 2025

Concept note

1. Introduction

The High-Level Meetings(HLMs) of the Presidents and Directors - General of National Statistical Institutes(NSIs) within the European Statistical System(ESS), organized by Member States in cooperation with Eurostat, serve as a forum for discussing key statistical challenges and opportunities for European official statistics.

Regulation(EU) 2024 / 3018 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 November 2024 has amended Regulation(EC) No 223 / 2009 on European statistics. It entered into force on 26 December 2024. The revised Regulation(EC) No 223 / 2009 on European Statistics opens a new chapter for European statistics. It will allow the ESS to become more pro - active and to produce high - quality and trustworthy European statistics more efficiently. More specifically, the revised law enhances the access of national statistical authorities and Eurostat to administrative sources and, for the first time, includes a requirement to make privately held data available for the compilation of official statistics, while ensuring safeguards for sensitive information and reducing the reporting burden on businesses. It fosters data sharing among the statistical authorities of the EU Member States and with the European System of Central Banks(ESCB), and makes innovation and experimental statistics an indispensable part of their core business. The Regulation also includes possibilities for NSIs to assume new roles and tasks in national data governance frameworks and provides a mechanism for statistical response to crisis situations.

At the ESS Committee(ESSC) meeting of 6 February 2025, it was agreed to structure the implementation work into the following thematic strands:

  • Reusing administrative and publicly available data for the development and production of European statistics;
  • Using privately held data for statistical purposes;
  • Development of European statistics;
  • New roles of NSIs in national data governance frameworks;
  • Statistical response to urgent policy needs in crisis situations;
  • Fostering data sharing within ESS and with the ESCB.

Furthermore, the ESSC expressed at its meeting on 6 February 2025 its support for an implementation approach that takes place at national, ESS and Eurostat levels and that follows the above - mentioned thematic strands.

The revised Regulation(EC) No 223 / 2009 takes into account the new digital reality, enabling more efficient acquisition, processing, and sharing of data and information of the public good nature. The amendment marks a major step forward in the use of privately held sources, such as smart meter data, web data, payment transaction data and others, which proved valuable e.g. during the pandemic.

2. Meeting objectives

The HLM in Warsaw, a key event accompanying the Polish Presidency in the Council Working Party on Statistics, will focus on the implementation of the revised Regulation(EC) No 223/2009, specifically addressing sustainable access to and use of privately held data for European statistics. The key topics to be discussed navigate around various aspects of privately held data, apprehended from legal, operational and practical perspective in the context of the revised Regulation (EC) No 223/2009.

In particular, the meeting aims at discussing:

  • Implementation strategies for new data access provisions and cooperation mechanisms between statistical authorities and private data holders
  • Good practices and business cases on accessing and using privately held data
  • Potential applications of privately held data in various statistical domains such as smart meter data, web data, payment transaction data, mobile data and expected outputs of such applications(e.g. new statistics and statistical insights, improved timeliness)
  • Actions to be undertaken at EU level(e.g.by Eurostat) on implementing new data access provisions
  • Legal and ethical considerations
  • Quality assurance of privately held data sources and infrastructure issues.

The results of the meeting will be further discussed at the ESSC meeting in May 2025, laying the foundation for further steps to be taken in the implementation of the revised Regulation (EC) No 223/2009.

3. Expected outcomes

The meeting will explore the immediate potential benefits of the access and use of privately held data from different angles, such as the cooperation with stakeholders, including strategies of communication to make it more efficient, new products and services offered as a result of such cooperation. It will also set the paths of a possible way forward in terms of providing:

  • examples of enhanced cooperation mechanisms between statistical authorities and private data holders,
  • examples of possible roadmaps for addressing legal and ethical challenges,
  • proposals for standardizing quality assurance processes for privately held data,
  • possibilities for Eurostat engagement in the implementation of the revised Regulation(EC) No 223/2009.

These outcomes will be instrumental in effectively seizing the opportunities offered by the revised Regulation(EC) No 223/2009 in terms of access and use of privately held data and ensuring that the ESS remains at the forefront of statistical innovation and policymaking in the digital age.

4. Structure – organisational issues

The meeting is scheduled for 10-11 April 2025. It will take place at the Bristol Hotel in Warsaw.

The meeting is designed as a one-and-a half day workshop, starting in the morning of the 10th of April and ending with lunch on the 11th of April. It will feature three different types of sessions: presentations on good practices/business cases with Q&A, 4 breakout sessions(four group discussions on domain-based cases) and it will end with a closing panel discussion.

Session 1 – Opening session: Attendance of the Polish Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs and Deputy Minister for Sports and Tourism is foreseen.Their remarks will handle the use of statistical products from the policymakers’ perspective.

Session 2 - Privately held data for statistical purposes in practice: In this session four presentations by Member States are foreseen to show their experiences in the form of business cases and examples of good practices. Q&A will follow.

Session 3 / introducing the breakout sessions - Remarks by a business representative: a business representative talking about making their data accessible for statistics and the incentives/benefits they see from this cooperation. The talk will tackle cooperation and communication mechanisms to make the dialogue more efficient for the public good. 4 Breakout sessions - four groups for domain-based discussions. Domains can be apprehended from two perspectives: either from specific fields of statistics (e.g. movement of people-related statistics, tourism statistics, transport statistics) or from the perspective of data sources(e.g. payment transaction data, MNOs data, smart meter data).

Session 4 / Closing panel discussion – Implementation of the revised Regulation 223 – the way forward. After debriefing from the group discussions and exchange on the group summaries and findings, the closing panel discussion on the 11th of April will end the meeting.