Following an agreement reached amongst the EU’s finance ministers in June (Europolitics 3994), the Council of the European Union adopted a regulation on 26 July to give the Union’s statistical office, Eurostat, increased powers to police national data. This move follows recurrent discrepancies and shortcomings in figures notified to the Commission by Greece in relation to its public finances, and repeated calls by the Council for it to improve the collection and processing of its statistical data. The amendments concern regulation EC/479/2009 on the quality of statistical data in the context of the excessive deficit procedure.

The Greek government admitted last October that it had failed to report billions of euro worth of debt in the health, military and social security sectors, resulting in a quadrupling of the 2009 Greek deficit. The admission led to a crisis of confidence in the single currency, eventually forcing eurozone leaders to cobble together two multi-billion euro bailout packages last month.

Eurostat envoys will now be able to visit member states they suspect of botching their figures, gaining access to detailed surveys, balance sheets and budgets from national down to local level, and including semi-state bodies and social security funds. Commission-approved national experts will have to be appointed to assist with methodological visits - which will only be conducted where a country makes frequent or major changes to data or refuses to send all the required information to the Commission - while so-called ‘dialogue visits’ will take place more often.

Athens was first caught out by Eurostat in 2004, and the Commission then tried to beef up the rules but could only get a watered down version of its proposal through Council due to the reluctance of member states to give the EU’s statistical body extra access.