The quality of Greece’s fiscal data has been raising several concerns since 2004, when the European Commission launched an infringement procedure against it for misreporting deficit figures, however the procedure was closed in 2007. Nevertheless, according to the Commission, this has not meant that Greek fiscal data “were compliant with all the applicable rules and procedures, as far as their quality was concerned.”
In fact, the Commission has pointed out that between 2005 and 2009, Eurostat introduced five reservations on the quality of the data submitted by Greece. In January 2010, the Commission adopted a report slamming Greece over its unreliable deficit and debit statistics. In October 2009, Greece revised its 2008 budget deficit, reported and validated by Eurostat, from 5.0% of GDP to 7.7%. It also revised its 2009 public deficit, reported in April 2010, from 3.7% to 12.5%. The Commission has stressed that the above-mentioned revisions illustrate “the lack of quality of the Greek fiscal statistics (…) and show that the progress in the compilation of fiscal statistics in Greece, and the intense scrutiny of the Greek fiscal data by Eurostat since 2004 (…), have not sufficed to bring the quality of Greek fiscal data to the level reached by other EU Member States.”
The Commission has also pointed out that there is no guarantee of the “independence, integrity and accountability of the national statistical authorities.” Particularly, there is a lack of independence of the Greek statistical institute (NSSG) and the General Accounting Office (GAO) from the Ministry of Finance which, according to the Commission, “has allowed the reporting of EDP data to be influenced by factors other than the regulatory and legally binding principles for the production of high quality European statistics.”
Due to the lack of reliability of Greece’s public finance statistics, the Commission put forward a proposal for a Council Regulation amending Regulation 479/2009 as regards the quality of statistical data in the context of the excessive deficit procedure, granting auditing power to Eurostat. The Council adopted this proposal in July 2010, consequently Eurostat in now entitled to examine Member States’ public accounts so it can verify the data provided.
In the meantime, the Commission has noted that the eurozone crisis has shown the need to further strengthen the quality and credibility of EU statistics. Consequently, it has recently presented a proposal for a regulation amending Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics aiming at strengthening governance in the European Statistical System. The proposal is, therefore, intended to “strengthen in law the independence, reliability and quality management of statistics coming from Member States and compiled at EU level.”
The draft regulation sets up measures to safeguard the independence of National Statistical Institutes, particularly the heads of these authorities. It provides that the Heads of NSIs “shall act in an independent manner; they shall neither seek nor take instructions from any government or other institution, body, office or entity”.
Moreover, according to the Commission the involvement of national governments in the responsibility of applying the European Statistics Code of Practice could strengthen the quality of European statistics, thus it proposed the establishment of ‘Commitments on Confidence in Statistics’. Under the draft proposal the governments of all Member States would be required to sign and implement a ‘Commitment on Confidence in Statistics’, pledging to fully respect the European Statistics Code of Practice, particularly to safeguard the independence of NSIs and to establish a national quality assurance framework for statistics.
The so called "Commitments of Confidence" would be draft and signed by each member state and counter-signed by the European Commission. Eurostat will monitor the implementation of these Commitments.
The proposal has been sent to the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers for adoption according to the ordinary legislative procedure.
