7th Euroindicators Working Group

7th Euroindicators Working Group Luxembourg, 27 & 28 September 2004 Eurostat - Unit C6Economic Indicators for the Euro-zone

Agenda – 27 September • 09.30 – 09.45 Welcome - ADOPTION OF THE AGENDA 1. Work plan of Unit C6 • 09.45 – 10.30 Main achievements 2002-03 and future activities for 2004-05 2. Euroindicators in the context of the new Eurostat portal • 10.30 – 11.00The new Estat portal platform • 11.00 – 11.15 Coffee break • 11.15 – 11.45 New structure of Euroindicators pages (Euroindicators dedicated section) • 11.45 – 12.15 3. Euroindicators publications State of affairs and Monitoring Report - Newsletter Webtrends - Selected Readings - Eurostatistics • 12.15 – 14.15 Lunch break

Agenda - 27 September • 14.15 – 14.45 4. Euroindicators data availability • 14.45 – 15.30 5. Quality control of the Euro-IND database • 15.30 – 16.00 6. Further issues on data quality control Quarterly report on PEEIs quality • 16.00 – 16.15 Coffee break • 16.15 – 16.35 Quality measures for quarterly national accounts data • 16.35 – 16.50 Short-term statistics quality project ECB daily quality control • 16.50 – 17.15 7. Metadata Eurostat guidelines to improve metadata for EU aggregates Improvement of national metadata

Agenda - 28 September 8. Guidelines for the production of PEEIs • 09.00 – 09.30 Seasonal adjustment • 09.30 – 10.00 Revisions 9. Improving Principal European Economic Indicators • 10.00 – 11.00 Back-recalculation, high frequency data estimation and Growth Indicator of the Euro-zone • 11.00 – 11.15 Coffee break • 11.15 – 11.45 Flash estimates of quarterly gross domestic product • 11.45 – 12.15 Advances in Euro-zone GDP flash estimates • 12.15 – 14.15 Lunch break

Agenda - 28 September 10. Readability of PEEIs: a statistical framework for business cycle analysis • 14.15 – 15.00 Estimation of Euro-zone growth cycle • 15.00 – 15.30 Euro-zone turning point chronology • 15.30 – 16.00 Direct vs indirect approach in business cycle analysis for the Euro-zone • 16.00 – 16.15 Coffee break • 16.15 – 16.45 11. Tools preparation to improve and analyse infra-annual data • 16.45 – 17.15 12. Cooperation strategy in the field of infra-annual statistics and business cycle analysis (DG ECFIN, ECB, OECD, IMF, AIECE, CIRET) • 17.15 – 17.30 OECD-Eurostat Workshop on Benchmarking

Item II.1 of the Agenda Doc 115/04 Main achievements 2002-2003 and future activities for 2004-2005 Gian Luigi Mazzi, Unit C6 Eurostat - Unit C6Economic Indicators for the Euro-zone

I. Mission of the Unit C6

I. Mission of the Unit C6 • Co-ordinate the efforts of Eurostat’s sectoral units in the realm of infra-annual EU/EMU economic statistics through the Editorial Committee (data, metadata, revisions, classification, etc.); • Assure an overall coherence of the indicators offered; • Control the quality of the indicators submitted by Eurostat’s sectoral units; • Complement the indicators offered by Eurostat with indicators from other sources, most notably DG ECFIN, but also from NSIs;

I. Mission of the Unit C6 • Advise and support Eurostat’s sectoral units in the use of statistical techniques for improving indicator quality: • data mining, factor analysis, modelling, … • Develop and test new techniques for improving indicator quality: • increasing frequency through interpolation • length through extrapolation • timeliness through flash estimation (nowcasting).

II. Main achievements for 2002-2003

II. Main achievements for 2002-2003 Such activities were structured into three main pillars: • The creation of a Website for business cycle analysts (Euroindicators). • The implementation and the dissemination of a database • Euro-IND database - the first Eurostat database ready for a web dissemination. • The development of statistical and econometric tools: • improving short-term statistics • creating a statistical perception framework of the business cycle situation.

II.1 Euroindicators activities 2002-2003 • Realisation of the predefined tables for infra-annual statistics; • Definition of the statistical content of Shorties predefined tables; • Improvement of the content of the Euroindicators website; • Redefinition of the statistical content of the euro-IND database in particular in some domains such as external trade; • Reinforcement of the quality control of the Euro-IND database;

II.1 Euroindicators activities 2002-2003 • Preparation of a quality strategy for the Principal European Economic Indicators (PEEIs); • Definition of the new structure for the Eurostatistics publication; • Improvement of the content of the Euroindicators online publications (e.g. Newsletter and Webtrends); • Reinforcement of the cooperation with the production units through the Editorial Committee.

II.2 Eurotrend activities 2002-2003 • Definition of a statistical framework for the reconstruction of long time series with an application to several PEEIs; • Definition of statistical tools and methods to increase the timeliness of data (flash estimates); • Development of sophisticated techniques in the field of Benchmarking and temporal disaggregation; • Construction of coincident indicators with an application to some PEEIs; • Comparative analysis of alternative techniques for the estimation of output gap and for dating and detecting turning points;

II.2 Eurotrend activities 2002-2003 • Definition of statistical measures to test the convergence and the synchronisation of European economies; • Identification of a general framework for the definition of common production guidelines for the PEEIs in key areas, such as seasonal adjustment, revisions and estimations; • Realisation of three Colloquia on Modern Tools for Business Cycle Analysis; • Improvement of the cooperation with institutional and non institutional bodies in the field of infra-annual statistics and business cycle analysis.

II.3 Other activities FROCH Group • Definition of a set of highly aggregated PEEIs on which to concentrate the effort of improvement during the next years; • Definition for each PEEI and each country of an improvement plan of benchmarking with the corresponding US data; • Definition of the “First for Europe” principle; • Realisation of several analysis in a very innovative way such as the creation of a representative European sample starting from non-significant national ones (European sampling).

II.4 Non achievements and delays Eurostat Crisis in 2003: main consequences for the Unit • Impossibility to start sooner the production of the new Eurostatistics publication; • Some lack of punctuality in the production of our main online publications; • Cancellation of the production of several Statistics in focus already planned; • Delay in the transformation of the methodological development into a regular Eurostat production.

III. Work plan 2004-2005

III.1 Euroindicators work plan Two main events will continue to characterise the Euroindicators activity: • Free dissemination of all Eurostat statistics, to be started in October 2004 • New Eurostat portal which should become available soon

III.1 Euroindicators work plan 2004-2005 • Implementation of the Euroindicators dedicated session into the new Eurostat portal; • Improvement of the Euro-IND database in terms of quality and content; • Improvement of the template content and documentation of the Shorties predefined tables; • Regular publication of the Eurostatistics publication;

III.1 Euroindicators work plan 2004-2005 • Reduction of the delays of our online publication and improvement of their content; • Publication of a quarterly quality report on PEEIs; • Improvement of co-operation relationships with Eurostat Units, institutional bodies and Member States.

III.2 Eurotrend work plan 2004-2005 • Regular production and update of statistical estimates of PEEIs: • Definition and follow-up of the adoption of some production guidelines for PEEIs in key areas; • Definition and regular update of statistical indicators of the cyclical situation; • Upgrade of existing Eurostat tools and preparation of new tools for the production and analysis of infra-annual statistics, especially PEEIs • Development of new statistical tools for quality assessment, data analysis and estimation of time series;

III.2 Eurotrend work plan 2004-2005 • Regular contribution to the Eurostatistics publication; • Regular production of the Selected Readings publication; • Publication of the proceedings of the 4th Eurostat colloquium on Modern Tools for Business Cycle Analysis; • Preparation of the 5th Eurostat /OECD Colloquium on Benchmarking; • Increase the cooperation with institutional bodies and research institutes.

Item II.1 of the Agenda Doc 116/04 New Eurostat Website Site3and its Deployment Bernard Le Goff, Unit A5 - Information and Dissemination François Vernadat,Unit B2 - Informatics Eurostat - Unit C6Economic Indicators for the Euro-zone

Contents • Basic principles • Website today with iAS Portal technology • Homepage for the Free Dissemination • Next release in December

I. Basic Principles • Trilingual website providing statistical information produced by Eurostat (free or on charge) • Compliant with Europa recommendations • Access to information and products from external sources (Comext, NewCronos, Ramon/Coded, Circa…) • Content organised by dedicated sections • Based on state of art technology (Oracle Portal) • Content loading with automatic procedures (workflows) • All types of contents described by metada attributes • Advanced search facilities for publications and datasets • User registration and user groups (alerts, restricted areas)

External Reverse Proxies Internal Reverse Proxies External users ERP IRP Internal Users Europa server Authentification Mechanism (for registered Users) Commission LDAP Estat Website 3 Oracle iAs Site 3 repository (Unix file System) XML Data XML Metadata XML Data On-line queries Suite (java) Comext Client Comext (C+java) New Cronos (C+Java) Text Server New Architecture (Free dissemination) -24h/7d Availability in secure environment -Fail-over mechanism -Contingency plan New Cronos database (File system) Comext Database (Oracle DB)

Website today with iAS Portal Technology On line presentation

Homepage for the Free Dissemination • Links to the free data • Dedicated sections • SDDS • On-line support • On line presentation

Next release of Site3 • Scheduled for December 2004 • New Homepage • New functionalities • Integration of the FD navigation trees in the Portal • SDDS forms as Portal items • Extended on-line support (on-line user support, user satisfaction surveys, EU-Bookshop…)

Item II.1 of the Agenda Doc 117 / 04 Site3 Dedicated Section on Euroindicators Virginie Kammer, Unit C6 – Economic Indicators for the Euro-zone Bernard Le Goff, Unit A5 - Information and Dissemination François Vernadat,Unit B2 - Informatics Eurostat - Unit C6Economic Indicators for the Euro-zone

Contents Euroindicators dedicated section on Site3 • Same look & feel than other dedicated sections • 9 sub-sections • On-line presentation

Item II.3 of the Agenda Doc 118/04 Euroindicators Publications Regina Soares, Unit C6 Eurostat - Unit C6Economic Indicators for the Euro-zone

I. Quality reports of Euro-IND database An important factor for the success of Euroindicators website is the evaluation of the quality of the site. The quality of Euro-IND is checked on a monthly basis and the outcome of the quality check is accessible through two Monthly PDF publications, available on-line: • State of Affairs (detailed) • Monitoring Report (synthetic)

I. Quality reports of Euro-IND database Currently, in order to assess the quality of Euro-IND, five key issues have been selected: • Relevance • Completeness • Timeliness • Accuracy • Clarity

II. Euroindicators users The analysis of users’ behaviour is contained in a monthly PDF publication called Webtrends. Objectives of this publication are: • Give an overview of the activities hosted on Euroindicators site during the specified time frame; • Inform about the users’ behaviour within the Euroindicators site; • Analyse the development of the Euroindicators site on the basis of users’ interest.

III. Statistical events Information of the most significant events which characterized the world of the infra annual statistics is available in Euroindicators website through the monthly PDF publication Newsletter. • conferences • seminars • workshops • etc

IV. Selected Readings • Bi-monthly bibliography of working papers and articles about all aspects of short-term analysis • The selection and readings of research in economics, econometric techniques and statistics is an important and integral part of the Euroindicators project. • There is a variety of publications produced on a wide range of short-term analysis related issues and our team wants to ensure that the most significant findings are accessible to all those with an interest .

V. Conclusions The members of the Working Group are requested to give their suggestions on the following points: • How to improve the quality evaluation of Euro-IND? • How national representatives can play an active role in this quality evaluation by giving their own input on the quality of the site? • How national representatives can contribute to improve Selected Readings, including additions and other changes to the outline and reading list?

Item II.3 of the Agenda Doc 119/04 Eurostatistics Gian Luigi Mazzi, Unit C6 Eurostat - Unit C6Economic Indicators for the Euro-zone

Presentation of the new layout and content of Eurostatistics

I.1 On the content of the Eurostatistics Three sections are designed: • Section 1 – Summary analysis • Short comment "European economic environment", pointing out the most important economic facts, and providing some figures and graphics of special interest; • Section 2 – Main Indicators for Eurozone and European Union • Concentrated solely on the Euro-zone and the European Union providing some figures and graphics on the evolution of the main indicators selected in the different domains.

I.1 On the content of the Eurostatistics • Section 3 - Detailed Tables • Contains monthly and quarterly macroeconomic data presented following an economic classification of the indicators. • Sub-sections: • Section 3.1 — Output • Section 3.2 — Demand • Section 3.3 — Labour Market • Section 3.4 — Prices • Section 3.5 — External Trade • Section 3.6 — Money & Finance

I.1 On the content of the Eurostatistics Each sub-section provides a complete set of tables: • To illustrate economic trends at a glance  graphics illustrate the figures. • To permit an easy understanding and interpretation of statistical data  explanatory notes supply the information background.

I.1 On the content of the Eurostatistics The new Eurostatistics is currently published: • on PDF (colour version) • on paper (black and with version). It is possible to easily consult the PDF version of Eurostatistics At the following address: http://europa.eu.int/comm/eurostat/Public/datashop/printcatalogue/EN?catalogue=euroindicators&collection=06-Publications

Conclusions The Euroindicators Working group is required to: • Agree on the structure and comments of the new publication; • Suggest possible improvement both in terms of content and layout; • Suggest more analytical parts to be included in the new Eurostatistics publication.

Item II.4 of the Agenda Doc 120/04 Euroindicators data availability Gian Luigi Mazzi & Virginie Kammer, Unit C6 Eurostat - Unit C6Economic Indicators for the Euro-zone

7th Euroindicators Working Group