Commission Regulation (EC) No 1216/2003 of 7 July 2003 implementing Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the labour cost index (Text with EEA relevance)

Article 1

Transmission and adjustment procedures

The index series shall be delivered in the following forms:

(a) unadjusted;

(b) working-day adjusted;

(c) seasonally and working-day adjusted.

Article 2

Quality

The quality criteria referred to in Article 8(1) of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 shall comprise the following:

(a) relevance;

(b) accuracy;

(c) timeliness and punctuality;

(d) accessibility and clarity;

(e) comparability;

(f) coherence;

(g) completeness.

The national authorities shall ensure that the results reflect the true situation regarding the economic activities with a sufficient degree of representativity.

Article 3

Transition periods

Details relating to the transition periods provided for in Article 9(1) of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 are set out in Annex II to this Regulation.

Article 4

Coverage of  NACE Rev. 2

sections O to S

Article 5

Chaining of the index

The Laspeyres chain index formula to be used for calculating the labour cost index for combinations of  NACE Rev. 2 sections referred to in the Annex to Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 is set out in Annex IV to this Regulation.

Article 6

Derogations

Derogations from the provisions of Article 1(2) accepted pursuant to Article 9(2) of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 are set out in Annex V to this Regulation.

Article 7

Entry into force

This Regulation shall enter into force on the 20th day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.

This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.

ANNEX I

The annual reports on quality for the labour cost index include the following items:

(a) evidence of relevance to user needs: — a summary including description of the users, origin and satisfaction of users' needs, and relevance of statistics for the users;

(b) evidence of accuracy (information broken down by  NACE Rev. 2 sections): — revision history: a table showing the revisions in the published year-on-year growth rates for total labour costs using the unadjusted series, for the last 12 quarters; a summary of the reasons for the revisions, — coverage: a table showing the percentage of the employees represented in the sample(s)/register(s) based on the number of employees according to ESA 95; if labour cost items are collected from different sources, a table broken down by labour cost items according to Article 4(2) of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003, — frequency: a table showing the frequency of collecting/updating the different cost item information, — estimation: a description of the methods used to estimate/model the missing information (missing groups of employees, enterprises, economic activities and cost items); an evaluation, as quantitative as possible, of the impact on the final figures of completely missing information (missing groups of employees, enterprises, economic activities and cost items), — hours worked: a description of the methods for compiling the hours worked; or a description of the proxy measure of the hours worked and an evaluation, as quantitative as possible of the impact of the proxy measure on the final figures, — administrative data: where administrative data are used, comments on the correspondence and differences between the administrative concepts and the theoretical statistical concepts;

(c) timeliness and punctuality: — a table showing the delays in days in transmitting the data for the last 12 quarters covered by the report and the correspondence between planned and actual date of transmission;

(d) accessibility and clarity: — a description of the publication media for the data and metadata in Member States;

(e) comparability: — a description of any differences in concepts and methods in any pair of consecutive quarters from the first quarter of 1996 onwards. In addition, a description of the differences and an assessment, as quantitative as possible, of the effect of the change in the estimates. Any differences in comparability between the  NACE Rev. 2 sections should also be identified;

(f) coherence: — a graph and a table showing annual unadjusted growth rates of the total labour cost index ( NACE Rev. 2 sections) and of the ESA 95 compensation of employees per hours worked (A6 breakdown) with explanations for the differences in the growth rates for the last 12 quarters;

(g) completeness: — a progress report of the implementation of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 together with a detailed plan and timetable for completing the implementation; a summary of the remaining deviations from EU concepts.

The first quality report due by 31 August 2004 includes also the following items for the back data:

— a description of the sources used for the back data and the methodology employed,

— a description of the correspondence between the coverage (economic activities, employees, cost items) of the back data and that of the current data,

— a description of the comparability of the back data and the current data.

ANNEX II

ANNEX IV

The Laspeyres chain index formula to be used for the calculation of the labour cost index (LCI) for combinations of  NACE Rev. 2 sections:

= labour costs per hour worked of employees in  NACE Rev. 2 section i in quarter t in year j = labour costs per hour worked of employees in  NACE Rev. 2 section i in year k = hours worked by employees in  NACE Rev. 2 section i in year k = labour costs of employees in  NACE Rev. 2 section i in year k.

where 1 ≤ t ≤ 4.

where

LCItj(0) = 100. (L0,1). (L1,2) ….. (Lj-m-1,j-m ). LCItj(j-m).

ANNEX V

Derogations

Denmark, Germany, France and Sweden: the index series shall be delivered only (b) working-day adjusted and (c) seasonally and working-day adjusted. The working-day and seasonal adjustment methods shall be fully documented and made available for the Commission (Eurostat).