General

To ensure sound management of the common agricultural policy, the European Commission needs regular data on developments in livestock population and meat production and on probable production trends.

While data collection and preparation and the organisation of surveys at national level should remain the responsibility of the statistical services of the Member States, the Commission has the task of ensuring the coordination and harmonisation of statistical information at European level and the use of the harmonised methods required to implement common policy.

The Eurostat Directorate-General of the European Commission provides the public with farming data on the Member States and the applicant countries in the form of the "New Cronos" database. While the collection of data in the Member States is governed by regulations and directives as well as gentlemen's agreements, information on the applicant countries has until now been provided on a voluntary basis. In both cases, the statistics must be accompanied by reports on the methods applied to ensure that the data are wholly comparable and provide users with sufficient information. The European Commission therefore produces detailed method reports, which also provide important information for the Agris project. In this project, presented to the Working Group on Animal Products Statistics in March 2000, available data is recorded from various databases and can be checked for consistency. The inconsistencies found are then investigated and any improvements are implemented.

Method reports are drawn up in cycles of several years when relevant changes take place in the area of animal statistics. The last reports were drawn up in 1985 and 1991. Since then, several fundamental changes have taken place: Council Directives 93/23/EEC, 93/24/EEC, 93/25/EEC and 97/77, the accession of Austria, Finland and Sweden to the European Union, the change of methodology in the Member States, etc. In addition, enlargement of the EU is imminent, and a method report on animal products statistics would provide the applicant countries with a valuable guide to analysing the system of animal products statistics in the current 15 Member States of the EU and finding ways of bringing their system of farming statistics into line with EU requirements.

The study made use of all the relevant available information. In order to ensure that the study provided a completely up-to-date picture of the methodology of animal statistics, a questionnaire was distributed among the Member States' and candidate states' delegates to the Working Party on Animal Production Statistics. All the questionnaires which were completed and returned to Eurostat were used to compile the report.

The Member States send Eurostat statistical data pursuant to Community legislation (Directives and Decisions) and gentlemen's agreements. In order to ensure that the statistics are produced cost effectively, Eurostat applies the "agriflex principle", which says that not all Member States have to fulfil the requirements in the same manner. If an area of agricultural production is insignificant in a particular country, the items of information to be provided by that country can be reduced in number or even eliminated altogether. This principle is akin to the "selection according to the concentration principle", which is often applied in market research, and yields statistically representative information at lower cost. The Council Directives on animal statistics contain numerous examples of this approach (e.g. the option available to Member States whose pig population is less than three million head to carry out just one survey, rather than the usual three). Another possibility for cost savings is to use administrative data, an option which the Directives expressly provide for.