Meeting of the heads of statistical offices of the European Statistical System (ESS) held

Discussion on the use of privately held data in focus

As part of the Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union, on 10 and 11 April 2025 a meeting of the heads of statistical offices of the European Statistical System (ESS) was held in Warsaw, on the topic of using privately held data under the revised Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics. The meeting was attended by Lidija Brković, the Director General of the Croatian Bureau of Statistics.

The key topics of discussion were the different aspects of using privately held data for the production of European statistics, the cooperation mechanisms between statistical authorities and private data owners, and new products and services resulting from this collaboration.

Possible next steps, guidelines for addressing legal and ethical challenges, and proposals for the standardisation of quality assurance procedures for privately held data were discussed. In addition to examples of good practice in the use of such data, their potential application in various statistical domains was also considered.

The Director General participated in the closing panel discussion titled “Implementation of the revised Regulation 223 - the way forward”, together with Mariana Kotzeva, the Director-General of Eurostat, and the heads of statistical offices of Poland, Ireland, Switzerland and Malta. The discussion covered various aspects of privately held data, including leading a dialogue with private data owners, the measures that national statistical offices can take to demonstrate the value of public use of such data, and the first steps in implementing the new provisions of the Regulation (EC) No 223/2009.

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