Press Release: Commission adopts draft regulation to improve budgetary statistics

The European Commission on 2 March 2005 adopted a draft Regulation aimed at improving the quality of national budgetary statistics which is essential to fulfil the fiscal surveillance duties assigned to it in the EU Treaty. The draft Regulation provided that Eurostat, the European Union's statistical office, would be able to carry out in-depth monitoring visits in the Member States, on top of its regular missions, to verify the reported fiscal data. The proposal also generally enshrined in a legal text existing best practices with regard to the compilation and reporting of data in the context of the excessive deficit procedure.