Regulation (EU) No 549/2013 of the European Parliament and the Council (2) sets up the European System of Accounts 2010 (‘ESA 2010’) and contains the reference framework of common standards, definitions, classifications and accounting rules for drawing up the accounts of the Member States for the statistical requirements of the Union.
(2)
Regulation (EC) No 138/2004 of the European Parliament and the Council (3) sets up the economic accounts for agriculture (‘EAA’) in the Union by providing for the methodology and the time-limits for the transmission of the agricultural accounts. The EAA are satellite accounts of national accounts, as provided for by ESA 2010, with the purpose of obtaining results that are harmonised and comparable between the Member States in order to draw up the accounts for the purposes of the Union. In 2016, the European Court of Auditors published a special report No 1/2016 entitled ‘Is the Commission’s system for performance measurement in relation to farmers’ incomes well designed and based on sound data?’. That report includes sound and relevant observations and recommendations regarding EAA and Regulation (EC) No 138/2004.
(3)
The regional economic accounts for agriculture (‘REAA’) are a regional-level adaptation of the EAA. National figures alone cannot reveal the full and sometimes complex picture of what is happening at a more detailed level. Therefore, regional-level data help to increase the understanding of the diversity that exists between regions, complement information for the Union, the euro area and individual Member States, while responding to the increased need for statistics for accountability, and increase the level of harmonisation, efficiency and consistency regarding Union agricultural statistics. The REAA therefore need to be integrated into Regulation (EC) No 138/2004 in terms of methodology and the transmission programme of data.
(4)
Statistics are no longer considered to be just one among many sources of information for policy-making purposes but instead play a central role in the decision-making process. Evidence-based decision-making requires statistics that meet high-quality criteria, as set out in Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council (4), in accordance with the purposes they are serving.
(5)
High-quality statistical regional-level data are a central tool for the implementation, monitoring, evaluation, review and assessment of the economic, environmental and social impact of policies related to agriculture in the Union, in particular the common agricultural policy (‘CAP’), including rural development measures, the CAP's new delivery model and national Strategic Plans, as well as Union policies relating to, inter alia, the environment, climate change, biodiversity, the circular economy, land use, balanced and sustainable regional development, public health, animal welfare, food safety and security and the United Nations sustainable development goals. The REAA are also crucial for assessing accurately the contribution of the agricultural sector to the achievement of the European Green Deal, in particular the Farm to Fork Strategy and the Union biodiversity strategy. There is increasing recognition of the role of regions and regional data in the implementation of the CAP. Regions represent an important driver for jobs and sustainable economic growth in the Union and provide better data for assessing the sustainability of the agricultural sector for the environment, people, regions and the economy.
(6)
In accordance with Regulation (EC) No 1049/2001 of the European Parliament and of the Council (5), the public should be granted access to the data collected under this Regulation that have not been published.
(7)
Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 provides the legal framework for European statistics and requires Member States to comply with the statistical principles and quality criteria set out in that Regulation. Quality reports are essential for assessing, improving and communicating on the quality of European statistics. The European Statistical System Committee (‘ESSC’) has endorsed the single integrated metadata structure as the European Statistical System standard for quality reporting, thereby helping to satisfy, through uniform standards and harmonised methods, the statistical quality requirements laid down in Regulation (EC) No 223/2009, in particular those set out in Article 12(3) thereof. Resources should be used optimally and the response burden should be minimised.
(8)
In order to ensure uniform conditions for the implementation of this Regulation, implementing powers should be conferred on the Commission in respect of the arrangements for, and the content of, the quality reports. Implementing powers should also be conferred on the Commission in respect of possible derogations from REAA requirements. Those powers should be exercised in accordance with Regulation (EU) No 182/2011 of the European Parliament and of the Council (6).
(9)
The EAA provide important annual macroeconomic data to European policy-makers three times per year as provided for in Annex II to this Regulation. The current transmission deadline for the EAA second estimates, one of those three data transmissions to be carried out per year, does not provide much time after the end of the reference period to collect improved data compared to the data provided for the EAA first estimates. To improve the quality of the EAA second estimates, the relevant transmission deadline needs to be slightly postponed.
(10)
Regulation (EC) No 138/2004 should therefore be amended accordingly.
(11)
Since the objective of this Regulation, namely the integration of REAA into the current legal framework for European statistics on EAA, cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States but can rather, for reasons of consistency and comparability, be better achieved at Union level, the Union may adopt measures, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity as set out in Article 5 of the Treaty on the European Union. In accordance with the principle of proportionality as set out in that Article, this Regulation does not go beyond what is necessary in order to achieve that objective.
