Alfred Sant, on behalf of the S&D Group. – Mr President, the text we have before us is important because it provides excellent guidelines regarding the collection of data we need to design to implement and to evaluate European policy in the coming years. There will be enormous needs for consolidation of policies with the probability that the deepening of eurozone governance will be attempted.

The danger is that consolidation will lag. Deepening could encourage further centrifugal effects on a systemic basis. To be able to detect such developments, we need statistics that are close to the bone and relevant to the issues. On that basis, one should be able to distinguish what is causal and what is contingent on developments between regions, nations, the North, South and East of the Union. This applies, not least to the situation of peripheral and island regions, which is my special interest.

Overridingly, there is a problem of how to reverse the growing divergences between parts of the Union. An essential step in that direction is a proper measurement of divergences. The text stresses rightly the social aspect of the data that will be needed. In that context, a priority area for statistical improvement would be labour data that captures the extent of precarious work, in-work poverty, youth and other under-employment of migrant workers.