Council Regulation (EC) No 2223/96 of 25 June 1996 on the European system of national and regional accounts in the Community (3) contains the reference framework of common standards, definitions, classifications and accounting rules for drawing up the accounts of the Member States for the statistical requirements of the Community, in order to obtain comparable results between Member States. The European System of Accounts 1995, set up by that Regulation, is known as ‘ESA 95’.
(2)
A comprehensive set of comparable, pertinent and timely national accounts data is needed for the conduct of monetary policy within the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), for the effective coordination of economic policies and for the purposes of structural and macroeconomic policies.
(3)
Annex B to Regulation (EC) No 2223/96 provides for a set of tables of national accounts data to be transmitted for Community purposes within specified time limits. Furthermore, the following Regulations provide that a range of additional data has to be transmitted to the Commission: Commission Regulation (EC) No 264/2000 of 3 February 2000 on the implementation of Council Regulation (EC) No 2223/96 with respect to short-term public finance statistics (4), Regulation (EC) No 1221/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 June 2002 on quarterly non-financial accounts for general government (5), Regulation (EC) No 501/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 March 2004 on quarterly financial accounts for general government (6), Council Regulation (EC) No 1222/2004 of 28 June 2004 concerning the compilation and transmission of data on the quarterly government debt (7) and Regulation (EC) No 1161/2005 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 6 July 2005 on the compilation of quarterly non-financial accounts by institutional sector (8). This Regulation does not cover the data included in those Regulations but, together, all the tables and data provided for in all six Regulations referred to in this recital constitute the complete transmission programme of national accounts data.
(4)
The transmission programme of national accounts data should be updated to take into account changing user needs and new policy priorities, and the development of new economic activities in the European Union.
(5)
The transmission programme of national accounts data should take into consideration the fundamental political and statistical changes that have occurred in some Member States during the reference periods of the programme.
(6)
The Economic and Financial Committee’s Status Report on Information Requirements in EMU of 25 May 2004, endorsed by the Council on 2 June 2004, underlined the need to amend the transmission programme so as to comply with the requirements of the EMU Action Plan and the Lisbon strategy.
(7)
A sound statistical basis for the composition of public budgets is crucial for economic reform in line with the Lisbon strategy and the transmission of health, education and social protection data would help in its achievement. The provision of such data should become mandatory after a phase of provision on a voluntary basis.
(8)
Since the objective of this Regulation, namely the creation of common statistical standards that permit the production of harmonised national accounts data, cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States and can therefore be better achieved at Community level, the Community may adopt measures, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity as set out in Article 5 of the Treaty. In accordance with the principle of proportionality, as set out in that Article, this Regulation does not go beyond what is necessary in order to achieve that objective.
(9)
The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the Statistical Programme Committee (SPC) and of the Committee on Monetary, Financial and Balance of Payments Statistics (CMFB),
