Regulation (EC) No 862/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 July 2007 on Community statistics on migration and international protection and repealing Council Regulation (EEC) No 311/76 on the compilation of statistics on foreign workers (Text with EEA relevance) - Main contents

EN

Official Journal of the European Union

L 199/23

The conclusions of the Justice and Home Affairs Council of 28-29 May 2001 considered, regarding common analysis and the improved exchange of statistics on asylum and migration, that there is a need for a comprehensive and coherent framework for future action on improving statistics.

In April 2003, the Commission released a Communication to the Council and to the European Parliament, setting out an Action Plan for the collection and analysis of Community Statistics in the field of migration. This included a number of important changes designed to improve the completeness and degree of harmonisation of these statistics. Under the Action Plan, the Commission aimed to propose legislation on Community statistics on migration and asylum.

The Thessaloniki European Council of 19 and 20 June 2003 concluded that more effective mechanisms were needed for the collection and analysis of information on migration and asylum in the European Union.

The European Parliament in its resolution of 6 November 2003 (3) on the abovementioned Communication from the Commission noted that legislation was required to ensure the production of comprehensive statistics necessary for the development of fair and effective Community policies on migration. The resolution supports the Commission's plans to propose legislation for migration and asylum statistics.

Enlargement of the European Union has brought an added geographical and political dimension to the scale of the phenomena associated with migration. It has also brought a further impetus to the demand for accurate, timely and harmonised statistical information. There is also an increasing need for statistical information regarding the profession, education, qualifications and type of activity of migrants.

Harmonised and comparable Community statistics on migration and asylum are essential for the development and monitoring of Community legislation and policies relating to immigration and asylum, and to the free movement of persons.

There is a need to reinforce the exchange of statistical information on asylum and migration and to improve the quality of Community statistical collections and outputs which have, hitherto, taken place on the basis of a series of ‘gentlemen's agreements’.

It is essential that information be available, throughout the European Union, for the purposes of monitoring the development and implementation of Community legislation and policy. In the main, current practice does not sufficiently ensure, in a uniform manner, regular, timely and rapid delivery and dissemination of harmonised data.

This Regulation does not cover estimates of the number of persons illegally resident in the Member States. Member States should not provide such estimates or data on such persons to the Commission (Eurostat), although they may be included in population stocks due to surveys.

Wherever possible, the definitions used for the purposes of this Regulation are taken from the United Nations Recommendations on Statistics of International Migration, the United Nations Recommendations for the Censuses of Population and Housing in the ECE Region or EC legislation, and should be updated following the relevant procedures.

New Community needs on statistics on migration and asylum render obsolete the provisions of Council Regulation (EEC) No 311/76 of 9 February 1976 on the compilation of statistics on foreign workers (4).

Regulation (EEC) No 311/76 should therefore be repealed.

Since the objective of this Regulation to establish common rules for the collection and compilation of Community statistics on migration and international protection cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States and can therefore, by reason of the scale of the action, 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.

Council Regulation (EC) No 322/97 of 17 February 1997 on Community Statistics (5) constitutes the reference framework for the provisions of this Regulation. In particular, it requires conformity to standards of impartiality, reliability, objectivity, scientific independence, cost-effectiveness and statistical confidentiality.

The measures necessary for the implementation of this Regulation should be adopted in accordance with Council Decision 1999/468/EC of 28 June 1999 laying down the procedures for the exercise of implementing powers conferred on the Commission (6).

In particular, the Commission should be empowered to update the definitions, to decide on the groupings of data and additional disaggregations and to lay down the rules on accuracy and quality standards. Since those measures are of general scope and are designed to amend non-essential elements of this Regulation and to supplement it by the addition of new non-essential elements, they should be adopted in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny laid down in Article 5a of Decision 1999/468/EC.

The Statistical Programme Committee, established by Council Decision 89/382/EEC, Euratom of 19 June 1989 establishing a Committee on the Statistical Programmes of the European Communities (7), has been consulted in accordance with Article 3 of that Decision,

immigration to and emigration from the Member State territories, including flows from the territory of one Member State to that of another Member State and flows between a Member State and the territory of a third country;

the citizenship and country of birth of persons usually resident in the territory of the Member States;

administrative and judicial procedures and processes in the Member States relating to immigration, granting of permission to reside, citizenship, asylum and other forms of international protection and the prevention of illegal immigration.

‘usual residence’ means the place at which a person normally spends the daily period of rest, regardless of temporary absences for purposes of recreation, holiday, visits to friends and relatives, business, medical treatment or religious pilgrimage or, in default, the place of legal or registered residence;

‘immigration’ means the action by which a person establishes his or her usual residence in the territory of a Member State for a period that is, or is expected to be, of at least 12 months, having previously been usually resident in another Member State or a third country;

‘emigration’ means the action by which a person, having previously been usually resident in the territory of a Member State, ceases to have his or her usual residence in that Member State for a period that is, or is expected to be, of at least 12 months;

‘citizenship’ means the particular legal bond between an individual and his or her State, acquired by birth or naturalisation, whether by declaration, choice, marriage or other means according to national legislation;

‘country of birth’ means the country of residence (in its current borders, if the information is available) of the mother at the time of the birth or, in default, the country (in its current borders, if the information is available) in which the birth took place;

‘immigrant’ means a person undertaking an immigration;

‘emigrant’ means a person undertaking an emigration;

‘long-term resident’ means long-term resident as defined in Article 2(b) of Council Directive 2003/109/EC of 25 November 2003 concerning the status of third-country nationals who are long-term residents (8);

‘third-country national’ means any person who is not a citizen of the Union within the meaning of Article 17(1) of the Treaty, including stateless persons;

‘application for international protection’ means application for international protection as defined in Article 2(g) of Council Directive 2004/83/EC of 29 April 2004 on minimum standards for the qualification and status of third-country nationals or stateless persons as refugees or as persons who otherwise need international protection and the content of the protection granted (9);

‘refugee status’ means refugee status as defined in Article 2(d) of Directive 2004/83/EC;

‘subsidiary protection status’ means subsidiary protection status as defined in Article 2(f) of Directive 2004/83/EC;

‘family members’ means family members as defined in Article 2(i) of Council Regulation (EC) No 343/2003 of 18 February 2003 establishing the criteria and mechanisms for determining the Member State responsible for examining an asylum application lodged in one of the Member States by a third-country national (10);

‘temporary protection’ means temporary protection as defined in Article 2(a) of Council Directive 2001/55/EC of 20 July 2001 on minimum standards for giving temporary protection in the event of a mass influx of displaced persons and on measures promoting a balance of efforts between Member States in receiving such persons and bearing the consequences thereof (11);

‘unaccompanied minor’ means an unaccompanied minor as defined in Article 2(i) of Directive 2004/83/EC;

‘external borders’ means external borders as defined in Article 2(2) of Regulation (EC) No 562/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 15 March 2006 establishing a Community Code on the rules governing the movement of persons across borders (Schengen Borders Code) (12);

‘third-country nationals refused entry’ means third-country nationals who are refused entry at the external border because they do not fulfil all the entry conditions laid down in Article 5(1) of Regulation (EC) No 562/2006 and do not belong to the categories of persons referred to in Article 5(4) of that Regulation;

‘third-country nationals found to be illegally present’ means third-country nationals who are officially found to be on the territory of a Member State and who do not fulfil, or no longer fulfil, the conditions for stay or residence in that Member State;

‘resettlement’ means the transfer of third-country nationals or stateless persons on the basis of an assessment of their need for international protection and a durable solution, to a Member State, where they are permitted to reside with a secure legal status.

immigrants moving to the territory of the Member State, disaggregated as follows:

emigrants moving from the territory of the Member State disaggregated as follows:

persons having their usual residence in the Member State at the end of the reference period, disaggregated as follows:

persons having their usual residence in the territory of the Member State and having acquired during the reference year the citizenship of the Member State and having formerly held the citizenship of another Member State or a third country or having formerly been stateless, disaggregated by age and sex, and by the former citizenship of the persons concerned and by whether the person was formerly stateless.

persons having submitted an application for international protection or having been included in such an application as a family member during the reference period;

persons who are the subject of applications for international protection under consideration by the responsible national authority at the end of the reference period;

applications for international protection having been withdrawn during the reference period.

persons covered by first instance decisions rejecting applications for international protection, such as decisions considering applications as inadmissible or as unfounded and decisions under priority and accelerated procedures, taken by administrative or judicial bodies during the reference period;

persons covered by first instance decisions granting or withdrawing refugee status, taken by administrative or judicial bodies during the reference period;

persons covered by first instance decisions granting or withdrawing subsidiary protection status, taken by administrative or judicial bodies during the reference period;

persons covered by first instance decisions granting or withdrawing temporary protection, taken by administrative or judicial bodies during the reference period;

persons covered by other first instance decisions granting or withdrawing authorisation to stay for humanitarian reasons under national law concerning international protection, taken by administrative or judicial bodies during the reference period.

applicants for international protection who are considered by the responsible national authority to be unaccompanied minors during the reference period;

persons covered by final decisions rejecting applications for international protection, such as decisions considering applications as inadmissible or as unfounded and decisions under priority and accelerated procedures, taken by administrative or judicial bodies in appeal or review during the reference period;

persons covered by final decisions granting or withdrawing refugee status taken by administrative or judicial bodies in appeal or review during the reference period;

persons covered by final decisions granting or withdrawing subsidiary protection status taken by administrative or judicial bodies in appeal or review during the reference period;

persons covered by final decisions granting or withdrawing temporary protection taken by administrative or judicial bodies in appeal or review during the reference period;

persons covered by other final decisions, taken by administrative or judicial bodies in appeal or review, granting or withdrawing authorisations to stay for humanitarian reasons under national law concerning international protection during the reference period;

persons who have been granted an authorisation to reside in a Member State within the framework of a national or Community resettlement scheme during the reference period, where such a scheme is implemented in that Member State.

the numbers of requests for taking back or taking charge of an asylum seeker;

the provisions on which the requests referred to in point (a) are based;

the decisions taken in response to the requests referred to in point (a);

the numbers of transfers to which the decisions referred to in point (c) lead;

the number of requests for information.

third-country nationals refused entry to the Member State's territory at the external border;

third-country nationals found to be illegally present in the Member State's territory under national laws relating to immigration.

the number of residence permits issued to persons who are third-country nationals, disaggregated as follows:

the number of long-term residents at the end of the reference period, disaggregated by citizenship.

the number of third-country nationals found to be illegally present in the territory of the Member State who are subject to an administrative or judicial decision or act stating or declaring that their stay is illegal and imposing an obligation to leave the territory of the Member State, disaggregated by citizenship of the persons concerned;

the number of third-country nationals who have in fact left the territory of the Member State, following an administrative or judicial decision or act, as referred to in point (a), disaggregated by the citizenship of the persons returned.

for statistics required under Article 4 as a whole, disaggregations by:

for statistics required under Article 4(4), disaggregations by:

for statistics required under Article 5(1)(a), disaggregations by:

for statistics required under Article 5(1)(b), disaggregations by:

for statistics required under Article 6, disaggregations by:

for statistics required under Article 7, disaggregations by:

records of administrative and judicial actions;

registers relating to administrative actions;

registers of the population of persons or of a particular sub-group of that population;

censuses;

sample surveys;

other appropriate sources.

updating the definitions set out in Article 2(1);

defining the categories of groups of country of birth, groups of country of previous and next usual residence and groups of citizenship as provided for in Article 3(1);

defining the categories of the reasons for the permit as provided for in Article 6(1)(a);

defining the additional disaggregations and the levels of disaggregations to be applied to the variables as provided for in Article 8;

laying down the rules on accuracy and quality standards.