LegalizeCommission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1322 of 4 July 2025 specifying the technical items of the data set, establishing the technical formats for transmission of information and specifying the arrangements and content of the quality reports on the organisation of a sample survey in the use of information and communication technologies domain for reference year 2026 pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 of the European Parliament and of the Council
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 Articles 7(1), 8(3) and 13(6) thereof,
Whereas:
(1) In order to facilitate the transmission of information from the Member States to the Commission (Eurostat), technical formats covering concepts, processes, including data and metadata, should be established for the transmission of information.
(2) For the purpose of assessing the quality of statistics to be transmitted in the use of information and communication technologies domain, the detailed arrangements for the annual quality reports should be specified.
(3) In order to ensure the accurate implementation of a sample survey on the use of information and communication technologies, the technical items of the data set should be specified.
(4) In the interest of harmonisation across statistical domains and in order to avoid technical barriers during data transmission and processing, the representation of the variable identifiers set out in the Annex to this Regulation could change in some cases. Therefore, the Commission (Eurostat) may suggest that certain variable identifiers are modified by the Member States in the files transmitted to the Commission (Eurostat). Such modification could, for instance, have the purpose of applying the same variable identifiers as the ones used by other statistical domains. As that modification would not alter the information content of the data transmitted to the Commission but merely their representation during data transmission, it may be implemented by Member States through a simple one-to-one conversion immediately before data transmission.
(5) In order to allow the Commission (Eurostat) to retrieve the data by electronic means, data transmission and the submission of the annual quality report should be carried out through the Single Entry Point.
(6) For the categories of the characteristics listed in the Annex, Member States and the Union institutions should use, where appropriate, the statistical classifications for the territorial units, education, occupation and economic sector that are compatible with the NUTS (2), ISCED (3), ISCO (4) and NACE (5) classifications.
(7) The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the European Statistical System Committee,
HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION:
Article 1
Subject matter
This Regulation specifies the technical items of the data set, establishes the technical formats for the transmission of information from Member States to the Commission (Eurostat) and specifies the detailed arrangements for transmission and content of the quality reports in the use of information and communication technologies domain.
Article 2
Definitions
For the purposes of this Regulation, the following definitions shall apply:
(1) ‘fieldwork period’ means the period of time during which the data collection from respondents is conducted;
(2) ‘reference period’ means the period of time to which a particular item of information relates;
(3) ‘Single Entry Point’ means the common reception area for statistical data transmitted to the Commission (Eurostat).
Article 3
Description of variables
The technical characteristics of variables, laid down in the Annex, shall refer to:
(a) variable identifier;
(b) variable name and description;
(c) codes and labels;
(d) filter;
(e) variable type.
Article 4
Characteristics of target populations, observation units and rules for respondents
The target populations in the use of information and communication technologies domain shall be private households on the territory of the Member State and individuals who have their usual residence in the territory of the Member State.
For the variables listed in the Annex that concern households, information shall be collected for private households with at least one member aged 16 to 74 residing in the territory of the Member State.
For the variables listed in the Annex that concern the individuals, information shall be collected for individuals aged 16 to 74 residing in the territory of the Member State.
Information regarding individuals aged under 16 or over 74 may be provided on a voluntary basis.
The data collection for the use of information and communication technologies domain shall be carried out for a sample of private households or a sample of persons belonging to private households as observation units.
Article 5
Reference periods and date
The reference period for collecting statistics on the detailed topic ‘Interaction with public authorities’, set out in the Annex, shall be the three last quarters of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026.
For all other detailed topics under topic number 07, ‘Information society participation’, set out in the Annex, the reference period shall be the first quarter of 2026.
The time of the first interview shall set the reference date.
Article 6
Data gathering period
For data directly provided by respondents, the fieldwork period shall be the second quarter of 2026.
Article 7
Common standards for data editing, imputation and estimation
Imputation, modelling or weighting shall be applied to the data where information is missing, invalid or inconsistent.
Methods of statistical imputation may be applied where appropriate for variables in the detailed topics ‘Access to ICT’ and ‘Digital skills’, as set out in the Annex.
The procedure applied to the data shall preserve the variation and the correlation between variables. Methods that incorporate error components into the imputed values shall be preferable to those that simply impute a predicted value.
Methods which take into account the structure or other characteristics of the joint distribution of the variables shall be preferable to the marginal or univariate approach.
Article 8
Deadline and standards for transmitting data
Member States shall transmit the final data to the Commission (Eurostat) by 5 October 2026.
The data shall be transmitted in the form of microdata files, including appropriate weights. The data shall be fully checked and validated before transmission using the statistical data and metadata exchange standard through the Single Entry Point. That data shall comply with the validation rules in accordance with the specification of variables based on the coding and filters as set out in the Annex.
Member States shall provide the metadata to the Commission (Eurostat) in the standard metadata structure defined by the Commission (Eurostat) by 5 January 2027. They shall provide it through the Single Entry Point.
Article 9
Detailed arrangements and content of annual quality reports
Member States shall transmit to the Commission (Eurostat) an annual quality report on the use of information and communication technologies domain established in accordance with Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2180 (6).
The annual quality report shall be transmitted to the Commission (Eurostat) in accordance with the technical standards established by the Commission (Eurostat) by 5 January 2027.
The annual quality report shall be submitted through the Single Entry Point.
Article 10
Entry into force
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 all Member States.
Done at Brussels, 4 July 2025.
For the Commission The President Ursula VON DER LEYEN
(1) OJ L 261 I, 14.10.2019, p. 1, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2019/1700/oj.
(2) 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, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2003/1059/oj).
(3) 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 and French).
(4) Commission Recommendation of 29 October 2009 on the use of the International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO-08) (OJ L 292, 10.11.2009, p. 31, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reco/2009/824/oj).
(5) 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, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg/2006/1893/oj).
(6) Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2180 of 16 December 2019 specifying the detailed arrangements and content for the quality reports pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 of the European Parliament and of the Council (OJ L 330, 20.12.2019, p. 8, ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg_impl/2019/2180/oj).
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