Information

One of the major tasks of the European Statistical System (ESS) is to provide EU institutions, Member States and the public with reliable information about the society, economy, environment and development in the European Union. Therefore it is necessary to collect process and analyze statistical data from the Member States. It is an elaborate procedure to harmonize the questionnaires, the preparation process and the data delivery of 27 Member States in the EU so that comparable information between Member States and useful aggregated values for the entire EU is achievable.

 
In consequence of this, these data represent a precious and unique data source for the international research community although the full potential of these data is not exhausted with the publication of standardized aggregated tables. Furthermore there is a lot more analysis potential to model the European integration process, differences between Member States or best practice examples with multivariate and sophisticated evaluation.

 
The access to these confidential data can be provided by sets of anonymised microdata or in the premises of Eurostat in the safe centre in Luxembourg. Because of the changing demands of user needs the request for microdata tends in the direction of original microdata without direct identifiers. And by now there is only the possibility for European researchers to travel to Luxembourg what means a heavy burden, caused by the local constraints.

 
One way to guarantee decentralised access for researchers to Community statistics is to provide access in the in the National Statistical Institutes (NSIs) of their Member States. The ESSnet-Project “Decentralised Access to EU Microdata Sets” has proven the feasibility to access confidential data in Eurostat through a remote desktop connection in the safe centres of the Member States. As a central result of this project the recommendation for the implementation of a pilot study was given.

 
The project “Decentralised and Remote Access to Confidential Data in the ESS” deals with the implementation of the remote access from safe centres in Member States to the Community statistics at Eurostat.