LegalizeCommission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2022/2094 of 28 October 2022 specifying the technical items of data sets, establishing the technical formats for transmission of information and specifying the detailed arrangements and content of the quality reports on the organisation of a sample survey in the consumption domain pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 of the European Parliament and of the Council (Text with EEA relevance)
THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION,
Having regard to the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union,
Having regard to Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 10 October 2019 establishing a common framework for European statistics relating to persons and households, based on data at individual level collected from samples, amending Regulations (EC) No 808/2004, (EC) No 452/2008 and (EC) No 1338/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council, and repealing Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council and Council Regulation (EC) No 577/98 (1), and in particular Article 7(1), Article 8(3) and Article 13(6) thereof,
Whereas:
(1) To ensure the accurate implementation of the sample survey in the consumption domain called the Household Budget Survey (‘HBS’), the Commission should specify the technical items of the data set, the technical formats for transmission of information and the detailed arrangements and content of the quality reports.
(2) The HBS is a key instrument used to compile weightings for important macroeconomic indicators, such as consumer price indices and the harmonised indices of consumer prices as measures of inflation, as well as for national accounts purposes. Those surveys provide detailed descriptions of private households’ total consumption expenditure using household characteristics such as income, housing and many other demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. They therefore provide information on the economic and social living conditions of households and individuals in the Member States. The information from the HBS is also used at EU level in the context of consumer protection policy.
(3) The European Green Deal calls for a sustainable consumer policy that will help empower consumers to make informed choices and play an active role in the ecological transition (2). Furthermore, the Green Deal aims to ensure fair and inclusive transitions, with due attention to social concerns and distribution of impacts. The Farm to Fork strategy also aims at promoting sustainable food consumption and facilitating the shift to healthy, sustainable diets (3). In addition, Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan promotes healthy food to address certain cancer risks (4).
(4) The international comparability of national statistics on consumption expenditure requires the use of statistical classifications for territorial units, education, occupation and economic sector that are compatible with the NUTS (5), ISCED (6), ISCO (7) and NACE (8) classifications. Furthermore, to classify and analyse individual consumption expenditure incurred by households according to their purpose, the Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (‘COICOP’) (9) is to be used.
(5) The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the European Statistical System Committee, established by Article 7 of Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council (10),
HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION:
Article 1
Subject matter
This Regulation specifies the technical items of the data sets, the technical formats for the transmission of information from Member States to the Commission (Eurostat), the arrangements for transmission and the content of the quality reports in the consumption domain.
Article 2
Definitions
For the purposes of this Regulation, the following definitions apply:
(1) ‘reference period’ means the period to which a particular item of information relates;
(2) ‘current calendar year’ means the calendar year of the interview;
(3) ‘sample person’ means a member of a private household who is at least 16 years old on 1 January of the current calendar year;
(4) ‘sample household’ means a private household containing at least one sample person;
(5) ‘age’ of a person means the age in completed years on 1 January of the current calendar year;
(6) ‘reference person’ means the household member who is at least 16 years old and who contributes most to the total income of the household;
(7) ‘collection unit’ means a household or person with certain characteristics to which or whom the information collected pertains;
(8) ‘household respondent’ means the sample person from whom household-level information is obtained;
(9) ‘diary’ means a template (electronic or paper) in which households and/or household members record all items of daily consumption and/or expenditure;
(10) ‘recording period’ means the period for which a consumption expenditure diary is maintained by the household and/or individual.
Article 3
Statistical concepts and description of variables
Member States shall use the statistical concepts laid down in Annex I.
The technical characteristics of variables shall be those laid down in Annex II and refer to:
(a) the variable’s identifier;
(b) the variable’s name;
(c) the modality label and code;
(d) the collection unit;
(e) the reference period.
Article 4
Characteristics of the statistical populations and observation units and the rules on respondents
The target population in the consumption domain shall be private households and all persons composing those households in the territory of the Member State.
Information at household and individual level shall be collected or compiled for all household members, as specified in Annex II.
Proxy interviews shall be allowed.
Article 5
Reference periods
The reference period shall be one calendar year.
The reference period for consumption expenditure shall be the current calendar year. If consumption expenditure is collected retrospectively, i.e. partially in the previous year, it shall be considered as a good proxy for the current year.
The income reference period shall be the current calendar year, except for net current monthly household income where the reference period is the current month.
The reference periods for variables not referring to consumption expenditure and income shall be those specified in Annex II.
Article 6
Detailed sample characteristics
The recording period shall be at least 7 days. It shall be up to a maximum of 1 month unless innovative methods to collect data have been used. In duly justified cases, and only to the extent necessary, a recording period longer than 1 month shall be allowed.
The recording periods of sample households or persons shall be staggered over the reference period to even out the effect of seasonal and other temporal variations for the sample as a whole. This shall be done by dividing the sample into a number of subsamples and distributing these subsamples in terms of the recording period uniformly over the reference period.
At least three attempts shall be made to contact a sample household or person before it is dropped from the survey, unless the following situations occur:
(a) the address was impossible to locate;
(b) the address was non-residential or unoccupied;
(c) the household or person was not found at the address;
(d) the household or person was unable to respond (including due to incapacity);
(e) a definite refusal of the household or person to cooperate was received;
(f) the circumstances endangered the interviewer’s safety.
Controlled substitutions of sample households or persons shall be allowed, if one of the situations listed in paragraph 3 (a) to (f) arises, or if the sample household or person has not been reached after three attempts to contact them.
Procedures shall be followed to ensure that the process of substitution is controlled to the maximum extent possible. Such procedures shall include using a design that ensures that the selected substitutes closely match the significant characteristics of the households or persons that they replace.
The set of sample households or persons for substitution shall be defined prior to data collection. There shall be no substitution with households or persons not belonging to that set.
Small parts of a national territory amounting to no more than two per cent of the national population may be excluded from the HBS.
Article 7
Data gathering periods and methods
The main survey instruments for direct data collection from respondents shall be one or more interviews (household and/or individual interviews) and diary(s) on consumption expenditure maintained by households and/or individuals on a daily basis. For irregular consumption expenditure, data can also be collected retrospectively up to a maximum of 12 months before the interview. Smart tools and sources as well as registers or other methods can be used for data collection.
Data provided directly by respondents shall be collected by pen-and-paper method, by computer-assisted methods, including computer-assisted personal interviews, computer-assisted telephone interviews, self-completed computer-based interviews, computer-assisted web interviews including on tablets and smartphones, and by native smartphone applications.
The timing of the interview shall be as close as possible to the diary recording period.
Article 8
Common standards for data editing, imputation, weighting and estimation
Imputation, modelling or weighting shall be applied to the data where necessary.
Where non-response to total annual net income from all sources, including non-monetary components at household or personal level, results in missing data, appropriate methods for statistical weighting or imputation shall be applied.
Where non-response to income component variables, including income in kind from non-salaried activities at household or personal level, results in missing data, appropriate methods of statistical imputation shall be applied.
Two methods shall be used to estimate imputed rent depending on the size and structure of the national rental housing market: either the stratification method or the self-assessment method. Preference shall be given to the stratification method based on actual rents (either by direct extrapolation or by means of econometric regression). In the absence of a sufficiently large rental market, the self-assessment method shall be used.
The procedure applied to the data shall preserve the variation in and the correlation between variables. Methods that incorporate ‘error components’ into the imputed values shall be preferred to those that simply impute a predicted value.
Methods that take into account the correlation structure (or other characteristics of the joint distribution of the variables) shall be preferred to the marginal or univariate approach.
Article 9
Formats for transmitting information
Member States shall transmit the microdata that comply with the characteristics of the variables as specified in Annex II in electronic form to the Commission (Eurostat) in accordance with Article 11 of Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 and its Annex V. Monetary consumption shall be transmitted at 5-digit COICOP level; own consumption and cross-border consumption expenditure shall be transmitted at 2-digit COICOP level.
Member States shall transmit pre-checked data to the Commission (Eurostat) in the form of microdata files including appropriate weights, using the statistical data and metadata exchange standards set by the Commission (Eurostat) and the Single Entry Point.
Article 10
Quality reporting
In addition to the requirements laid down in Article 13 of Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 and Regulation (EU) 2019/2180 specifying the detailed arrangements and content of the quality reports (11), quality reports by Member States shall comply with the requirements listed in Annex III to this Regulation.
Member States shall transmit the quality-related reference metadata required by this Regulation to the Commission (Eurostat), using the statistical data and metadata exchange standards. They shall send the metadata through the Single Entry Point in order to enable the Commission (Eurostat) to retrieve the data by electronic means.
Article 11
This Regulation shall enter into force on the twentieth 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 the Member States.
Done at Brussels, 28 October 2022.
For the Commission The President Ursula VON DER LEYEN
(1) OJ L 261 I, 14.10.2019, p. 1.
(2) COM(2019) 640.
(3) COM(2020) 381.
(4) COM(2021) 44.
(5) Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 May 2003 on the establishment of a common classification of territorial units for statistics (NUTS) (OJ L 154, 21.6.2003, p. 1).
(6) International Standard Classification of Education 2011, http://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/international-standard-classification-of-education-isced-2011-en.pdf (available in English, French and Spanish).
(7) Commission Recommendation 2009/824/EC of 29 October 2009 on the use of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08) (OJ L 292, 10.11.2009, p. 31).
(8) Regulation (EC) No 1893/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 December 2006 establishing the statistical classification of economic activities NACE Revision 2 and amending Council Regulation (EEC) No 3037/90 as well as certain EC Regulations on specific statistical domains (OJ L 393, 30.12.2006, p. 1).
(9) UN International Classification of Individual Consumption According to Purpose (COICOP) 2018 https://unstats.un.org/unsd/classifications/business-trade/desc/COICOP_english/COICOP_2018_-pre-edited_white_cover_version-_2018-12-26.pdf (available only in English).
(10) Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2009 on European statistics and repealing Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 1101/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council on the transmission of data subject to statistical confidentiality to the Statistical Office of the European Communities, Council Regulation (EC) No 322/97 on Community Statistics, and Council Decision 89/382/EEC, Euratom establishing a Committee on the Statistical Programmes of the European Communities (OJ L 87, 31.3.2009, p. 164).