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Statistics

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 for Europe.

While fulfilling its mission, Eurostat promotes the following values: respect and trust, fostering excellence, promoting innovation, service orientation, and professional independence.

As part of its role to develop, produce and publish comparable statistics and data at European level, Eurostat works to ensure 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, apart from in a small number of exceptions. 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 EU level. These data are published at EU, euro area, national and, where possible, regional level and are published regularly in compliance with an established publication calendar.

One 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 it can publish EU, euro area and national level inflation figures and so that users may make comparisons between them.