Council Regulation (EC) No 2533/98Show full title

Council Regulation (EC) No 2533/98

of 23 November 1998

concerning the collection of statistical information by the European Central Bank

THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN UNION,

Having regard to the Protocol (No 3) on the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank (hereinafter referred to as the ‘Statute’) and in particular to Article 5.4 thereof,

Having regard to the recommendation of the European Central Bank (the ‘ECB’)(1),

Having regard to the opinion of the European Parliament(2),

Having regard to the opinion of the Commission(3),

Acting in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 106(6) of the Treaty establishing the European Community and in Article 42 of the Statute,

(1) Whereas Article 5.1 of the Statute requires the ECB, assisted by the national central banks, to collect either from the competent national authorities or directly from economic agents the statistical information which is necessary for the tasks of the European System of Central Banks (hereinafter referred to as the ‘ESCB’) to be performed; whereas, to facilitate the execution of these tasks, set out in Article 105 of the Treaty, and in particular the conduct of monetary policy, this statistical information is used primarily for the production of aggregated statistical information, for which the identity of individual economic agents is irrelevant, but may also be used at the level of individual economic agents; whereas Article 5.2 of the Statute requires the national central banks to carry out, to the extent possible, the tasks described in Article 5.1 of the Statute; whereas Article 5.4 of the Statute requires the Council to define the natural and legal persons subject to reporting requirements, the confidentiality regime and the appropriate provisions for enforcement; whereas the national central banks may cooperate with other competent authorities, including national statistical institutes and market regulators, for the purposes of Article 5.1 of the Statute;

(2) Whereas, in order for statistical information to be effective as an instrument for the performance of the tasks of the ESCB, definitions and procedures for its collection need to be structured so that the ECB has the ability and flexibility to avail itself in a timely manner of high-quality statistics which reflect changing economic and financial conditions and take account of the burden imposed on reporting agents; whereas in so doing attention must be paid not only to the performance of the ESCB's tasks and its independence but also to keeping the burden placed on the reporting agents to a minimum;

(3) Whereas it is therefore desirable to define a reference reporting population in terms of categories of economic units and statistical applications involved, to which the statistical powers of the ECB is confined and from which the ECB determines the actual reporting population through its regulatory power,

(4) Whereas a homogeneous reporting population is necessary for the production of the consolidated balance sheet of the Monetary Financial Institutions sector of the participating Member States, the principal aim of which is to provide the ECB with a comprehensive statistical picture of monetary developments in the participating Member States, seen as one economic territory; whereas the ECB has established and maintains a List of Monetary Financial Institutions for statistical purposes based on a common definition of these institutions;

(5) Whereas the said common definition for statistical purposes specifies that Monetary Financial Institutions comprise credit institutions as defined in Community law, and all other resident financial institutions whose business is to receive deposits and/or close substitutes for deposits from entities other than Monetary Financial Institutions and, for their own account (at least in economic terms), to grant credits and/or to make investments in securities;

(6) Whereas those post office giro institutions which may not fulfil the common definition for statistical purposes of Monetary Financial Institutions may nevertheless need to be made subject to the ECB's statistical reporting requirements in the field of money and banking statistics and payment systems statistics because they may, to a significant extent, receive deposits and/or close substitutes for deposits and undertake payment systems business;

(7) Whereas in the European System of National and Regional Accounts 1995(4) (hereinafter referred to as the ‘ESA 95’), the Monetary Financial Institutions therefore comprise the sub-sectors ‘the central bank’ and ‘other monetary financial institutions’ and may be broadened solely through the inclusion of categories of institutions coming from the sub-sector ‘other financial intermediaries, except insurance corporations and pension funds’;

(8) Whereas statistics on the balance of payments, the International Investment Position, securities, electronic money and payment systems are necessary to enable the ESCB to fulfil its tasks in an independent manner;

(9) Whereas the use of the terms ‘legal and natural persons’ in Article 5.4 of the Statute has to be construed in a manner that is consistent with the practices of Member States in the field of money and banking statistics and balance of payments statistics and therefore also encompasses entities that are neither legal persons nor natural persons under their respective national laws but still fall within the relevant sub-sectors of the ESA 95; whereas reporting requirements can therefore be imposed on entities such as partnerships, branches, undertakings for collective investments in transferable securities (UCITS) and funds that, under their respective laws, do not enjoy the status of a legal person; whereas in these cases the reporting obligation is imposed on those persons who, under the applicable national laws, legally represent the entities concerned;

(10) Whereas the statistical balance sheet reports of institutions mentioned in Article 19.1 of the Statute may also be used to calculate the amount of minimum reserves which they may be obliged to hold;

(11) Whereas it is the task of the Governing Council of the ECB to specify the division of tasks between the ECB and the national central banks concerning the collection and verification of statistical information and their enforcement, taking into account the principle laid down in Article 5.2 of the Statute, as well as the tasks which will be assumed by national authorities within the limits of their competence, for the purposes of obtaining statistics of a consistently high quality;

(12) Whereas, in the early years of the single currency area, cost-effectiveness may require that the ECB's statistical reporting requirements be satisfied through transitional procedures due to existing constraints on the collection systems; whereas this may imply in particular that, in the case of the Financial Account of the balance of payments, data on cross-border positions or transactions of the participating Member States seen as one economic territory may in the early years of the single currency area be compiled using all positions or transactions between residents of a participating Member State and residents of other countries;

(13) Whereas the limits within and the conditions under which the ECB is entitled to impose sanctions on undertakings for failure to comply with the obligations laid down in regulations and decisions of the ECB have been defined by Council Regulation (EC) No 2532/98 of 23 November 1998, concerning the powers of the European Central Bank to impose sanctions(5), in accordance with Article 34.3 of the Statute; whereas in the event of a conflict between the provisions of the said Regulation and this Regulation enabling the ECB to impose sanctions, the provisions of this Regulation will prevail; whereas the sanctions for non-compliance with the obligations set out in this Regulation are without prejudice to the possibility of the ESCB establishing appropriate enforcement provisions in its relations with counterparties, including the partial or total exclusion of a reporting agent from monetary policy operations in the case of a serious infringement of statistical reporting requirements;

(14) Whereas regulations made by the ECB under Article 34.1 of the Statute do not confer any rights or impose any obligations on non-participating Member States;

(15) Whereas Denmark, referring to paragraph 1 of the Protocol (No 12) on certain provisions relating to Denmark, has given notification, in the context of the Edinburgh Decision of 12 December 1992, that it will not participate in the third stage of Economic and Monetary Union; whereas, therefore, in accordance with paragraph 2 of the said Protocol, all Articles and provisions of the Treaty and the Statute referring to a derogation will be applicable to Denmark;

(16) Whereas under paragraph 8 of the Protocol (No 11) on certain provisions relating to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Article 34 of the Statute does not apply to the United Kingdom unless it participates in the third stage of Economic and Monetary Union;

(17) Whereas, while it is recognised that the statistical information needed to fulfil the ECB's statistical reporting requirements is not the same for the participating as for the non-participating Member States, Article 5 of the Statute applies to both participating and non-participating Member States; whereas this fact, together with Article 5 of the Treaty, implies an obligation to design and implement at the national level all the measures that Member States consider appropriate in order to carry out the collection of the statistical information needed to fulfil the ECB's statistical reporting requirements and the timely preparations in the field of statistics in order for them to become participating Member States;

(18) Whereas confidential statistical information which the ECB and the national central banks must obtain for the performance of the tasks of the ESCB must be protected in order to gain and maintain the confidence of the reporting agents; whereas once this Regulation is adopted there will be no further cause to invoke provisions on confidentiality preventing the exchange of confidential statistical information relating to the tasks of the ESCB, subject to the provisions of Directive 95/46/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 24 October 1995 on the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data(6);

(19) Whereas Article 38.1 of the Statute provides that members of the governing bodies and the staff of the ECB and the national central banks shall be required, even after their duties have ceased, not to disclose information of the kind covered by the obligation of professional secrecy and Article 38.2 of the Statute provides that persons having access to data covered by Community legislation imposing an obligation of secrecy shall be subject to such legislation;

(20) Whereas any infringement of the rules binding members of the staff of the ECB, whether committed wilfully or through negligence, renders them liable to disciplinary sanctions and, if appropriate, legal penalties for the violation of professional secrecy, subject to the combined provisions of Articles 12 and 18 of the Protocol on the privileges and immunities of the European Communities;

(21) Whereas the possible use of statistical information for the execution of the tasks to be carried out through the ESCB in accordance with Article 105 of the Treaty, while reducing the overall reporting burden, implies that the confidentiality regime defined in this Regulation must differ to some extent from the general Community and international principles on statistical confidentiality, and in particular from the provisions on statistical confidentiality in Council Regulation (EC) No 322/97 of 17 February 1997 on Community Statistics(7); whereas, subject to this point, the ECB will take into account the principles underlying Community statistics set out in Article 10 of Regulation (EC) No 322/97;

(22) Whereas the confidentiality regime defined in this Regulation applies only to confidential statistical information transmitted to the ECB for the performance of the tasks of the ESCB and does not affect special national or Community provisions relating to the transmission of other types of information to the ECB; whereas the rules on statistical confidentiality applied by the national statistical institutes and the Commission on the statistical information they collect on their own behalf must be respected;

(23) Whereas, for the purposes of Article 5.1 of the Statute, the ECB is required to cooperate in the field of statistics with the Community institutions or bodies and with the competent authorities of the Member States or third countries and with international organisations; whereas the ECB and the Commission will establish appropriate forms of cooperation in the field of statistics in order to carry out their tasks in the most efficient way, trying to minimise the burden on reporting agents;

(24) Whereas the ESCB and ECB have been entrusted with the task of preparing the statistical reporting requirements for the euro area for their full operation in the third stage of Economic and Monetary Union (hereinafter referred to as ‘Stage Three’); whereas timely preparation in the statistical field is essential to enable the ESCB to fulfil its tasks in Stage Three; whereas an essential element of preparation is the adoption, ahead of Stage Three, of ECB statistical regulations; whereas it is desirable to inform market participants during 1998 of the detailed provisions the ECB may deem necessary to adopt for the implementation of its statistical reporting requirements; whereas it is therefore necessary to provide the ECB from the date of entry into force of this Regulation with a regulatory power,

(25) Whereas the provisions of this Regulation can be effectively applied only if participating Member States in their entirety have adopted the necessary measures with a view to ensuring that their authorities have the powers to assist and collaborate fully with the ECB in carrying out the verification and compulsory collection of statistical information, in conformity with Article 5 of the Treaty,

HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION:

(1)

OJ C 246, 6. 8. 1998, p. 12.

(2)

OJ C 328, 26. 10. 1998.

(3)

Opinion delivered on 8 October 1998 (not yet published in the Official Journal).

(4)

OJ L 310, 30. 11. 1996, p. 1.

(5)

See page 4 of this Official Journal.

(6)

OJ L 281, 23. 11. 1995, p. 31.

(7)

OJ L 52, 22. 2. 1997, p. 1.