The Member States and the Commission, within their respective fields of competencies, shall produce Community statistics on the level and structure of employers' labour costs in the area of economic activities defined in Article 3.
The statistics shall be produced on the basis of statistical information for the financial year of 1996, subject to the special provisions mentioned in the Annex to this Regulation.
The statistics shall cover all economic activities defined in sections C (Mining and quarrying), D (Manufacturing), E (Electricity, gas and water supply), F (Construction), G (Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles, motorcycles and personal and household goods), H (Hotels and restaurants), group 63.3 (Activities of travel agencies and tour operators; tourist assistance activities not elsewhere covered) of section I (Transport, storage and communications), divisions 65 (Financial intermediation, except insurance and pension funding) and 66 (Insurance and pension funding, except compulsory social security) of section J (Financial intermediation) and section K (Real estate, renting and business activities) of the general industrial classification of economic activities in the European Community, hereinafter referred to as ‘NACE Rev. 1’ established by Council Regulation (EEC) No 3037/90 of 9 October 1990 on the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community(1), subject to the special provisions mentioned in the Annex to this Regulation.
The compilation of statistics on labour costs shall be based on any of the statistical units defined in Council Regulation (EEC) No 696/93 of 15 March 1993 on the statistical units for the observation and analysis of the production system in the Community(2) and shall provide information referring to local units classified by their own principal activity, by region at least at level 1 of the nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS 1), established by the Commission and by size class in terms of employment of the enterprise on which the local units are dependent. Information is required only for enterprises with at least 10 persons occupied.
Data shall be collected on:
total labour costs, including: compensation of employees; vocational training costs; other expenditure, taxes and subsidies directly related to labour costs;
the total staff employed
and
working time,
subject to the special provisions mentioned in the Annex to this Regulation.
1.A survey shall be carried out through the appropriate statistical services of the Member States which shall draw up the appropriate methods for collecting the information.
2.Employers and other persons required to supply information shall reply to the questions truthfully, completely and within the time limits set. The Member States shall take appropriate measures to avoid any infringement of the obligation to supply the information referred to in Article 5.
3.The survey need not be carried out if the Member States have information from other appropriate sources or Member States are able to produce estimates of necessary data using statistical inference methods where some or all of the characteristics have not been observed for all the units for which the statistics are to be compiled. The information from other appropriate sources or the estimates of necessary data can only be used if they are at least equivalent to survey requirements as regards accuracy, quality and timeliness.
4.The burden on enterprises, particularly on small and medium-sized enterprises, and representativeness requirements according to Article 7 shall be taken into account by the Member States in their choice and combination of the sources and the use of estimates referred to in paragraph 3.
5.The Member States shall transmit to the Commission at its request all information, particularly concerning methodologies, needed for the application of this Regulation, and in particular, in cases where data are derived from administrative sources, all the information necessary for the evaluation of their reliability and comparability.
The reliability and comparability on a high quality level shall be attained by the use of sample sizes allowing that the relative standard error for the variable ‘hourly labour costs’ by division of NACE Rev. 1 does not exceed 3 %.
The statistical services of the Member States shall process the replies to the questions referred to in Article 6 (2) or the information from other sources, as referred to in Article 6 (3), so as to obtain comparable results.
The results shall be transmitted within a period of 18 months from the end of the calendar year corresponding to the reference period, including confidential data, in accordance with Council Regulation (Euratom, EEC) No 1588/90 of 15 June 1990 on the transmission of data subject to statistical confidentiality to the Statistical Office of the European Communities(3).
The arrangements for implementing this Regulation, in particular:
definitions to be used,
the levels of breakdown to be applied to the variables,
guidelines on accuracy and the aspects of quality,
the appropriate forms of the transmitted variables
and
the results to be transmitted
shall be laid down in accordance with the procedure set out in Article 11.
The Commission shall be assisted by the Committee on the Statistical Programmes of the European Communities, hereinafter referred to as ‘the Committee’.
The representative of the Commission shall submit to the Committee a draft of the measures to be taken. The Committee shall deliver its opinion on the draft within a time limit which the Chairman may lay down according to the urgency of the matter. The opinion shall be delivered by the majority laid down in Article 148 (2) of the Treaty in the case of decisions which the Council is required to adopt on a proposal from the Commission. The votes of the representatives of the Member States within the Committee shall be weighted in the manner set out in that Article. The Chairman shall not vote.
The Commission shall adopt measures which shall apply immediately. However, if these measures are not in accordance with the opinion of the Committee, they shall be communicated by the Commission to the Council forthwith. In that event:
the Commission shall defer application of the measures which it has decided for a period of three months from the date of communication.
the Council, acting by a qualified majority, may take a different decision within the time limit referred to in the previous indent.
This Regulation shall enter into force on the 20th day after that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Communities.
This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.
Done at Brussels, 20 December 1996.
For the Council
The President
S. Barrett