New Cronos data from the Eurostat website, May 2004

A new opportunity to search for specific data on the Eurostat website has quietly appeared. When you look at the full view of free data - whichever route you use to reach it - you will find a new icon under some of the headings in the structural indicators and short-term indicators sections when you expand the section you want. This offers a “Full download”. Clicking on the icon generates a search window headed “Eurostat Visual Application “light” version” with a New Cronos logo. Here you can construct your search in three stages by choosing one or more criteria from the options listed or clicking on the “Select all” button. Firstly select your dates and where available, the frequency (e.g. quarterly, monthly etc); then pick the geographic area (specific member states, EU15, eurozone); and choose the relevant indicators. Click on “Next” to specify how you want the table to be laid out, or accept the default. Finally on the next screen, choose your data format: HTML, XML, CSV for opening in a spreadsheet, or a zip file to import into a database. You can select codes or labels, and to cater for different national conventions, specify the use of a decimal point or a comma. Simply click on download to generate the results. If you selected the default HTML setting, the data will be displayed in a table on screen complete with any footnotes and explanatory details requested. In most cases ten years of data seems to be available. Work seems still to be going on with this new feature. It has looked different when tested on various occasions and does seem prone to generating error messages, though it seems nevertheless to produce the data. Hopefully it will become more stable and should be a valuable development in the accessibility of statistical data. Visit the Eurostat website at http://europa.eu.int/comm/eurostat to test it for yourselves.