Statistical quality

1.   To guarantee the quality of results, European statistics shall be developed, produced and disseminated on the basis of uniform standards and of harmonised methods. In this respect, the following quality criteria shall apply:
(a)
‘relevance’, which refers to the degree to which statistics meet current and potential needs of the users;
(b)
‘accuracy’, which refers to the closeness of estimates to the unknown true values;
(c)
‘timeliness’, which refers to the period between the availability of the information and the event or phenomenon it describes;
(d)
‘punctuality’, which refers to the delay between the date of the release of the data and the target date (the date by which the data should have been delivered);
(e)
‘accessibility’ and ‘clarity’, which refer to the conditions and modalities by which users can obtain, use and interpret data;
(f)
‘comparability’, which refers to the measurement of the impact of differences in applied statistical concepts, measurement tools and procedures where statistics are compared between geographical areas, sectoral domains or over time;
(g)
‘coherence’, which refers to the adequacy of the data to be reliably combined in different ways and for various uses.
2.   In applying the quality criteria laid down in paragraph 1 of this Article to the data covered by sectoral legislation in specific statistical domains, the modalities, structure and periodicity of quality reports provided for in sectoral legislation shall be defined by the Commission in accordance with the regulatory procedure referred to in Article 27(2).
Specific quality requirements, such as target values and minimum standards for the statistical production, may be laid down in sectoral legislation. Where sectoral legislation does not so provide, measures may be adopted by the Commission. Those measures, designed to amend non-essential elements of this Regulation by supplementing it, shall be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny referred to in Article 27(3).
3.   Member States shall provide the Commission (Eurostat) with reports on the quality of the data transmitted. The Commission (Eurostat) shall assess the quality of data transmitted and shall prepare and publish reports on the quality of European statistics.