The Commission Communication of 20 August 2009 entitled ‘GDP and beyond: Measuring progress in a changing world’ (‘GDP and beyond’), and the publication of the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, have given new impetus to the key challenge for the ESS, namely how to achieve better statistics on cross-cutting issues and more integrated statistics to describe complex social, environmental and economic phenomena beyond the traditional measures of economic output.

The Commission Communication of 20 August 2009 entitled ‘GDP and beyond: Measuring progress in a changing world’, and the publication of the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Report on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress have given new impetus to the key challenge for the ESS, namely how to achieve better statistics on cross-cutting issues and more integrated statistics to describe complex social, environmental and economic phenomena beyond the traditional measures of economic output.

Decisive steps in economic governance and coordination have already been taken by the Union, some of which will have major statistical implications, in addition to ongoing statistical activities.

· Objective 3: strengthen the partnership within the European Statistical System and beyond in order to further enhance its productivity and its leading role in official statistics worldwide.

8. Takes note of the measures and tools adopted at European level to measure and analyse possible impacts of legislative initiatives on progress, such as impact assessments, including cost-benefit, cost-effectiveness and multi-criteria analyses, risk assessments, data collection, statistics, environmental economic accounts, political analysis at various political levels, reports on monitoring of implementation and enforcement and reviews carried out in different areas of EU legislation; supports fully the establishment of a solid legal framework for the European Environmental Economic Accounts as a positive step in the ‘GDP and beyond’ ...[+++]process;

Beyond its seemingly technical character, this directive is very important, and our aim in drafting it is to regulate two types of data on foreign affiliates, namely inward statistics, which relate to all the businesses and sectors that are under foreign control, and outward statistics, which relate to foreign enterprises that are controlled by a company located in the European Union.