Note prepared by the secretariat
1. A Work Session on Business Registers, convened jointly by ECE and Eurostat, was held in Luxembourg from 7-9 September 1994. It was attended by Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russian Federation, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Sweden, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, United Kingdom and Uzbekistan. A representative of EFTA attended. Also present at the invitation of the secretariat were staff members of CERVED International S.A.
2. The Work Session adopted the provisional agenda.
3. The Work Session was co-chaired by Mr. J. Perry (United Kingdom) and Mr. D. Defays (Eurostat).
4. The following substantive topics were discussed at the Work session on the basis of papers prepared by Czech Republic, Finland, Georgia, Hungary (2), The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Cerved International and Eurostat (7):
Recommendations for future work are given below. Other conclusions which the participants reached at the Work session on each of the above topics are reproduced (in English only) in the Annex of this note.
5. The Work Session considered future work in this area taking into full account the description of the programme element "business registers" from the integrated presentation of programmes of international statistical work in the ECE region, 1994/95 and 1995/96, approved by the Conference of European Statisticians at its forty second plenary session (Paris, 13-17 June 1994), which was made available to participants.
6. The Work Session agreed that ECE should continue to provide a broad forum for its member countries to consider specific problems of developing and maintaining business registers in statistical offices. It was suggested that future work of the ECE be focused on: assisting transition countries, in cooperation with Eurostat, in developing and maintaining business registers and in informing them about activities of Eurostat and other international fora in business registers; and on the consideration of specific methodological issues of common interest to all ECE member countries. The following methodological issues were specifically pointed out: meta-data for business registers, guidelines for tracking births and deaths of units in the business register, the identification of the death of enterprises and links between business registers and various fields of statistics.
7. The Work Session supported the idea of mailing a relevant subset of the Eurostat questionnaire, once adopted, on the present state of national business registers to all ECE member countries. The dispatch of the questionnaire by the ECE to transition countries could be accompanied by a letter asking these countries to identify the most important problems in business registers, the solution of which could benefit from a discussion at the next meeting. It was provisionally agreed to organize the next joint ECE/Eurostat meeting on business registers in the beginning of 1996.
8. In view of the above, the Work Session proposed the inclusion of the following in the work programme of the Conference:
3.14 Business registers
Activities of ECE : (CES Priority A)
Joint ECE/Eurostat meeting in 1995/96 on: (i) assisting transition countries in developing and maintaining business registers in the national statistical offices (together with Eurostat); (ii) techniques used for ensuring adequate coverage and quality (including enterprise panels and area frames); (iii) consideration of methodological issues (secretariat, with the assistance of national rapporteurs).
1. The Work Session was convened to discuss progress achieved in the implementation of the Eurostat programme of assistance to transition countries in the field of business registers and to consider future steps in carrying out the enterprise panel surveys in these countries. Methodological issues affecting both transition countries and other economies and related to creation, maintenance and use of business registers in statistical offices were also discussed.
2. The work session had before it discussion papers prepared by Czech Republic, Finland, Georgia, Hungary (2), The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Cerved International and Eurostat (7).
Documentation: Working papers by The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Czech Republic and Georgia.
3. Two presentations by the Czech Republic and the Republic of Georgia, which covered developments in their registers, raised the issues of the use of the register for statistical purposes, of wider access to register data by administrators and of publication of register data. These issues were common to countries in transition and to the other economies but with a different emphasis. The importance of meta-data was acknowledged in this multi-user environment. There was a general concern to exploit register data to the fullest extent possible, but participants recognised the limits imposed by the legal framework. The different quality requirements were explored but not resolved fully.
Documentation: Working paper by Finland.
4. This agenda item was covered on the basis of the paper from Finland and oral contributions from the United Kingdom, Denmark and the Netherlands. The linkage of data between the population census or the labour force survey and the business register provides the opportunity to reduce the cost and improve the quality of registers. It could also contribute to the improvement of various statistics. The procedures for matching data were mentioned. Limitations placed by national legislation, specific country conditions or the lack of data make the wider application of these procedures difficult without further consideration.
Documentation: Working papers by Eurostat (5).
5. The Work Session took note of the information contained in the documents submitted for the consideration of this item. The round table carried out for those transition countries which do not yet participate in the PANEL PECO project showed their interest in taking part in it when their systems become sufficiently developed. Their participation in the project at a later stage could also contribute to the improvement of the quality of the register and to the introduction of sample surveys.
6. It was clarified by Eurostat that the PANEL PECO project aims to cover newly created, notably small and medium-sized enterprises, in most economic sectors. The success of the project will depend on achieving very high response rates.
Documentation: Working paper by Eurostat.
7. The presentation by Eurostat provided simple and robust rules (involving operating enterprise, activity and location) for measuring the continuity of local units. Nevertheless there was considerable variation in the availability of data and in the importance of the local unit in national practices of the countries. There was also agreement that guidelines based on location and factors of production were important but variations may be needed according to national circumstances. The discussion would assist Eurostat in the drafting of its manual of recommendations which would include the guidelines covering continuity of the main types of statistical units consistently.
8. The Work Session's conclusions on future work are given in para. 5-8 of the body of this report.
Documentation: Working papers by Cerved International, Eurostat and Hungary.
9. The Work Session took note of the presentation of and the information contained in these papers.
10. The Work Session adopted the present report before it adjourned.