Since Regulation (EC) No 24/2009 of the European Central Bank of 19 December 2008 concerning statistics on the assets and liabilities of financial vehicle corporations engaged in securitisation transactions (ECB/2008/30)2 needs to be substantially amended, in particular in light of Regulation (EU) No 549/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 May 2013 on the European system of national and regional accounts in the European Union3, it should be recast in the interests of clarity.

Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 provides in Article 2(1) that, for the fulfilment of its statistical reporting requirements, the European Central Bank (ECB), assisted by the national central banks (NCBs), has the right to collect statistical information within the limits of the reference reporting population and of what is necessary to carry out the tasks of the European System of Central Banks (ESCB). It follows from Article 2(2)(a) of Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 that financial vehicle corporations engaged in securitisation transactions (hereinafter ‘FVCs’) form part of the reference reporting population for the purposes of fulfilling the ECB’s statistical reporting requirements, inter alia, in the field of monetary and financial statistics. Furthermore, Article 3 of Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 requires the ECB to specify the actual reporting population within the limits of the reference reporting population and entitles it to fully or partly exempt specific classes of reporting agents from its statistical reporting requirements.

The purpose of FVC data is to provide the ECB with adequate statistics on the financial activities of the FVC sub-sector in the Member States whose currency is the euro (hereinafter the ‘euro area Member States’), which are viewed as one economic territory.

Given the close links between the securitisation activities of FVCs and monetary financial institutions (MFIs), consistent, complementary and integrated reporting of FVCs and MFIs is required. Therefore, the statistical information provided in accordance with this Regulation needs to be considered together with the data requirements for MFIs on securitised loans, as laid down in Regulation (EU) No 1071/2013 of the European Central Bank of 24 September 2013 concerning the balance sheet of the monetary financial institutions sector (ECB/2013/33)4.

The integrated reporting approach of FVCs and MFIs and the derogations provided for in this Regulation aim at minimising the reporting burden for reporting agents and avoiding overlaps in the reporting of statistical information by FVCs and MFIs.

NCBs should be entitled to exempt FVCs from statistical reporting requirements that would cause unreasonably high costs compared to their statistical benefit.

Although regulations adopted by the ECB under Article 34.1 of the Statute of the European System of Central Banks and of the European Central Bank (hereinafter the ‘Statute of the ESCB’) do not confer any rights or impose any obligations on Member States whose currency is not the euro (hereinafter the ‘non-euro area Member States’), Article 5 of the Statute of the ESCB applies to both euro and non-euro area Member States. Recital 17 to Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 refers to the fact that Article 5 of the Statute of the ESCB, together with Article 4(3) of the Treaty on European Union, implies an obligation to design and implement at national level all the measures that the non-euro area Member States consider appropriate to collect the statistical information needed to fulfil the ECB’s statistical reporting requirements and make timely preparations in the field of statistics in order to become euro area Member States.

The standards for the protection and use of confidential statistical information laid down in Article 8 of Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 apply.

Article 7(1) of Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 provides that the ECB has the power to impose sanctions on reporting agents which fail to comply with statistical reporting requirements set out in ECB regulations or decisions,