Feedback to the European Commission on the Draft European Statistics on Population and Housing Regulation
The Center for Data Innovation is pleased to submit feedback on the European Commission’s consultation and call for evidence regarding the regulation on European statistics on population and housing. The European Commission is working to improve the collection and sharing of statistical data in the EU. While its proposed regulation is a strong start towards more relevant, consistent, and comparable data collection for population statistics across the EU, the Commission should also use this proposal to further address the data divide. The Center commends the proposed regulation on the following positive elements:
- The framework succeeds in creating much-needed coherence in population statistics by
harmonizing definitions in Article 2 and defining the population base in Article 3. - The proposed regulation codifies an obligation for national authorities to share population data
with other national authorities and Eurostat. - Article 6 and Article 7 of the proposed regulation improve data timliness.
- The proposed regulation increases the depth and breadth of data sources used by European statistical agencies.
To further improve the regulation's efforts to address the data divide, the Center recommends that the European Commission create a definition for “hard-to-reach populations."
