Eurostat's goals and tasks

Eurostat is the Statistical Office of the European Communities situated in Luxembourg, and established in 1953 to meet the requirements of the Coal and Steel Community. Over the years its task has broadened and when the European Community was founded in 1958 it became a Directorate-General (DG) of the European Commission.

Eurostat's mission is to provide the European Union with a high-quality statistical information service and to generate statistics at European level that enable comparisons between countries and regions. Eurostat in principle does not collect data. This is done in Member States by their statistical authorities, which verify and analyse national data and send them to Eurostat. Eurostat's role is to consolidate the data and ensure they are comparable, following harmonized methodology. Eurostat is the key provider of statistics at European level.

The European Statistical System

Since the early days of the EU it was realised that decisions on and planning and implementation of EU policies must be based on reliable and comparable statistics. So the European Statistical System (ESS) was built up gradually with the objective of providing comparable statistics at EU level.

The ESS comprises Eurostat and the statistical offices, ministries, agencies and central banks that collect official statistics in EU Member States, Iceland, Norway and Liechtenstein. The ESS functions as a network in which Eurostat's role is to lead the way in the harmonization of statistics in close cooperation with the national statistical authorities. The ESS also coordinates its work with international organisations such as the OECD, the UN, the IMF and the World Bank.

Statistical Programme

The main goals of the European Statistical System are laid down in the Statistical Programme adopted by the Council and European Parliament every five years. In the current programme, the statistical implications of the major EU policies concentrate on the Economic and Monetary Union, EU enlargement, Competitiveness, sustainable development and the Social Agenda as well as Structural Indicators.

Organisation

As one of the Directorates-General of the European Commission, Eurostat is headed by a Director-General. Working with him are Directors responsible for different sectors of Eurostat activities.

In 2003 around 700 people work in Eurostat. Of these, 580 are officials, the rest are experts sent from Member States or have other types of contracts (auxiliaire, interim). Eurostat has a total budget of around 117.8 million euro in 2003 (commitment appropriations).

JODI project

Eurostat has participated actively in the Joint Oil Data Initiative (JODI) from the very beginning.The JODI provides a valuable contribution to Eurostat database complementing the other annual and monthly energy statistics.