Sharon Bowles, author. – Mr President, the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs is consistent and united in its view that Eurostat has to be strengthened and we have, for a long time, been in pursuit of establishing higher quality statistical data.

We know the history as Mr Karas has already referred to it. In 2005, the Council brought shame on itself and sowed the seed of the current sovereign debt problems by weakening the Stability and Growth Pact and simultaneously denying audit powers to Eurostat. With that history, it takes time to regain trust, and lack of trust contributed to why, in the recent troubles, Member States had to put a lot of cash on the table. Words and political commitments by the Ecofin Council were not enough.

Soon, we will at last have audit power for Eurostat, all the more important now because it is the key that can make other plans about economic surveillance effective. A tool to get a grip on an outturn is so much better than just a grip on promises.

We want the quality of data to be improved, for it to be timely, and we want to be able to examine upstream input to national accounts, and we ask: is the new power given to Eurostat sufficient? Even now, the Ecofin Council has added in some conditionality to the new auditing power, actually less restricting than many of us feared, but has it undermined the possibility for really early investigation and intervention?

The European Parliament’s report favours unconditional rights for Eurostat to do so-called methodological visits. Of course, resources must be targeted where needed, but investigation needs to happen at the time of suspicion, not after the event.

Finally, when will we know that like is truly compared with like? What progress is being made to ensure that accounting procedures are standardised and sufficiently transparent to capture off-balance-sheet activity and any other innovative practices?