What the Commission is doing
Eurostat is the statistical office of the European Union and its mission is to provide high quality statistics and data on Europe.
While fulfilling its mission, Eurostat promotes the following values: showing respect for staff, partners and users; striving for excellence in everything that it does; driving innovation in official statistics; promoting a service orientation; and upholding professional independence.
As part of its independent role in developing, producing and publishing comparable statistics and data at the European level, Eurostat works to ensure that common concepts, methods, structures and technical standards are used across the EU. This provides data that are harmonised as far as possible.
Eurostat does not directly collect data itself, with the exception of a small number of cases. Data collection is done in EU countries by national statistical authorities in compliance with common EU statistical regulations and standards, monitored by Eurostat. These national authorities verify and analyse national data and send them to Eurostat. Eurostat then carries out data validation and quality control checks and produces aggregated figures, particularly at the EU level. These data are published at the EU, euro area, national and, where possible, regional levels and are published regularly in compliance with an established publication calendar.
For example, for an accurate picture of consumer price inflation, the Harmonised Indices of Consumer Prices (HICP) measure the changes over time in the prices of consumer goods and services acquired by households. They give a comparable measure of inflation as they are calculated according to harmonised definitions and statistical requirements which are covered in regulations which are binding in all EU member states. The member states produce the national data to the stipulated EU standards and send them to Eurostat so that it can publish EU, euro area and national level inflation figures and so that users may make comparisons between them.