Mr. Chairman, Ladies
and Gentlemen,
Last year the Conference
of European Statisticians celebrated its
50th Anniversary. That was an occasion
for the Conference to discuss its past
achievements and most importantly to identify
the challenges for the future. The discussion
focused on "Renewing the Conference of
European Statisticians". The Conference
looked into challenges such as: the Changing
Europe and the role of the Conference;
strengthening the role of the Conference
and its Bureau in identifying new emerging
statistical issues and setting the agendas
for their discussion and solutions; focusing
on issues of priority interest to different
groups of countries in the UNECE region.
A major concern of the Conference is preserving
its role as the "coordinator of coordinators"
and developing further the Integrated
Presentation of International Statistical
Work.
In order to respond to
all these challenges the Conference decided
to change the way it works and change
the structure of its plenary sessions.
During the past year the Bureau of the
Conference and its secretariat, the UNECE
Statistical Division, have worked hard
to implement the decisions of the 50th
Conference.
This year the plenary
session is organised according to the
new structure in three parts: one session
to deal with formal business and two seminar
sessions to deal respectively with new
emerging issues and fundamental issues
of statistical systems.
The Conference will open
with discussion on Matters arising
from the fifty-eighth Annual Session of
the Economic Commission for Europe held
in March 2003 on the basis of
a short paper prepared by the UNECE secretariat.
Attention will be drawn to the following
issues of relevance to the Conference
of European Statisticians:
- Major policy directions
of UNECE's work
- Sustainable development in the UNECE
region
- The UNECE reform
- Follow-up to World and Regional
Conferences and
- Technical cooperation.
As a part of its High-level
Policy Segment the 58th Annual Session
discussed the general context in which
UNECE operates both at the global and
regional level and the implications for
UNECE work. I recognize that the first
seminar session on new emerging issues
will deal with one of the main challenges
- globalisation. One of the implications
for our work is not only monitoring globalisation
but also assessing and reporting progress
made in the implementation of the Millennium
Development Goals at the regional level
and within individual countries. In Subprogramme
3 Statistics for the next biennium 2004-2005
we assume- among other things - to focus
on and increase capacity in monitoring
and reporting on progress in the region
towards the Millennium Development Goals.
Indicators of achievement will be the
level of satisfaction of the statistical
offices of member States with UNECE's
capacity to produce statistical data related
to it.
At the regional level
we are to be confronted with deepening
and expanding of regional cooperation,
EU-integration and EU-enlargement. In
order to prevent new divides in the region,
UNECE's role will be to facilitate cooperation
between the EU and non-acceding countries
or country-groupings organizations. Post-enlargement
is a challenge for the work of UNECE including
Statistics. I assume that this issue will
be a part of your discussion perhaps under
item 3 Integrated Presentation of International
Statistical Work in the UNECE region.
In 2004 we will commemorate
15 years from the beginning of transition.
The transition process in CEE and CIS
countries differs considerably. Progress
achieved in reforms, restructuring and
building market institutions is most advanced
in the acceding countries which are now
recognized as market economies, including
the Russian Federation. The UNECE will
continue to provide analyses of progress
in transition and policy advice if needed
but adjustments to post-transition period
in our work will sooner or later affect
our activities.
Some global and regional
efforts to respond more adequately to
new challenges under the umbrella of world
or regional conferences like the ICfFD,
the WSSD, the WAA and regional conferences
on ageing and information society in Berlin
or Bucharest respectively took place in
2002. At its fifty-eighth Annual Session
the Commission discussed the follow-up
to the conferences. I would like particularly
to underline that the WSSD Plan of Implementation
explicitly assigned important tasks to
the regions and regional commissions and
particularly to promote the integration
of the three dimensions of Sustainable
Development into their work, including
through implementation of Agenda 21. The
recent session of the CSD, April 2003
in New-York, made a suggestion to organize
Regional Implementation Fora with a focus
on monitoring, reviewing and exchanging
experiences and lessons learned from national
and regional implementation and partnership
initiatives. I assume that the next Ad
Hoc Informal Meeting of the Commission
in June will endorse the role of UNECE
in organizing Regional Implementation
Fora. We recognize the work of the OECD
and Eurostat in the field of Sustainable
Development and commitments of the EU
and OECD Member States made towards Sustainable
Development. Therefore we strongly believe
that the CES' initiative in monitoring
and reporting sustainable development,
if agreed, would be an important contribution
to fulfilling this task. Since 11 September
2001 we live in a different world. Security
and the fight against terrorism are becoming
more and more relevant for economic and
social development. Member States at the
Annual Session invited the UNECE to work
on the economic and environmental dimension
of security and so did the ministers of
foreign affairs of the OSCE at their ministerial
meeting. We cannot proceed further without
the assistance of the statisticians and
I hope very much you will be dedicated
to this.
At this Commission's
Annual Session - under the item UNECE
Reform - the member States discussed the
on-going process of how to better respond
to the above indicated challenges, how
to further strengthen the Organization.
The UNECE reform calls for continued and
regular review of the intergovernmental
structure that should be carried out with
the full participation of the Principal
Subsidiary Bodies. I note that in this
context, the Bureau of the Conference
regularly reviews the ad hoc expert meetings
and any joint activities organised within
the programme of work of the Conference
in order to ensure that they are efficient,
relevant and most importantly to ensure
that duplication of work is avoided. I
would like to encourage you to include
the review of publications into your considerations.
I would particularly appreciate an increased
cooperation in the preparation of the
statistical publications of UNECE, Eurostat
and OECD.
The attention of the
Conference will be drawn to issues related
to technical cooperation work, for which
the UNECE secretariat has prepared a paper
on Technical Cooperation Activities covered
by the UNECE Statistical Division for
the period June 2002-May 2003. In view
of the progress in transition I would
like to reiterate that the focus of our
technical cooperation will be on the countries
in SEE and CIS that need it the most.
Ladies and Gentlemen!
The Integrated Presentation of
International Statistical work in the
UNECE region is traditionally
a main topic for discussion. For the first
time this year, the planned statistical
work of the other UN regional commissions
is presented in a special addendum to
the Integrated Presentation. This has
been done following the recommendation
of the 50th Conference in order to improve
the exchange of information and knowledge
between the regional commissions and Committees
of Statistics. ECLAC, ESCWA and ESCAP
have contributed information on their
statistical programmes.
Furthermore, the Bureau
of the Conference decided to propose to
the Conference that an Annual
UNECE Statistical Programme be prepared
in future starting from January
2004. Of course, the UNECE Statistical
Programme has to be in line with the Biennium
Programme of Work 2004-2005 as adopted
by the United Nations General Assembly
this year. We therefore have increasingly
to involve the CES or its Bureau in the
budget preparatory process which starts
two years before the budget adoption.
The Programme will identify
the annual statistical activities of the
UNECE across the UNECE divisions. It will
be also an important tool for the UNECE
Statistical Division to be able to coordinate
the statistical activities carried out
in UNECE under different subprogrammes
and in this way to fulfil its mandate.
It is proposed that a draft of the first
Annual UNECE Statistical Programme starting
from January 2004 be prepared for review
by the Bureau at its meeting in October
2003.
As already mentioned
globalisation and how to measure this
phenomenon is the topic of the
first seminar session organised by Statistics
Canada. The discussion will focus mainly
on (i) the impact of globalisation on
traditional statistical systems and (ii)
the role of international statistical
cooperation. Governor David Dodge (Governor
of the Bank of Canada) will deliver a
keynote speech via a videoconference.
Other main contributors include the Bureau
of Economic Analyses (USA), Office for
National Statistics (UK), France, Canada,
IMF and OECD. The issues considered will
include measuring the impact of multinational
enterprises (MNEs) on national economies
which is critical for the National Statistical
Offices (NSOs). ITC related issues of
measuring MNEs' role that could have negative
consequences such as biases in national
economic statistics, Gross Domestic Product
calculations, and trade and balance of
payments statistics will also be discussed.
Furthermore, understanding the behaviour
and impact of the MNEs is also important
for assessing the effects of globalisation.
The main questions to be answered by the
statisticians are: How best to ensure
accurate measurement of the activities
of multinational enterprises? How best
to assess the impact of foreign MNEs in
a given country and the impact abroad
of MNEs based in that same country?
Statistical Confidentiality
and Microdata is the topic of
the second seminar organised by Statistics
Sweden. The discussion will focus on:
(i) Use of microdata; (ii) Data confidentiality
(iii) Legal aspects; (iv) Access to microdata.
Several transition countries have contributed
papers, such as Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Lithuania,
Russian Federation and Ukraine. The UNECE
Statistical Division was a member of the
organising committee preparing the session.
The UNECE secretariat conducted a survey
among the CES member countries, which
include the UNECE countries plus non-European
OECD countries, to identify the main concerns
of the countries. A special questionnaire
was developed to survey the concerns of
the Transition Economies, which served
as the basis for preparing an UNECE paper.
The main challenge to
a National Statistical Office regarding
statistical confidentiality (one of the
Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics)
and microdata is to strike a balance between
confidentiality protection and increased
use of microdata. As increased use of
microdata implies improved possibility
of providing better data to meet the needs
of users, this balance lies at the heart
of official statistics which should provide
an indispensable element in the information
system of a democratic society, serving
the government, the economy and the public
with data. Simultaneously individual data
collected by statistical agencies for
statistical compilation, whether they
refer to natural or legal persons, are
to be strictly confidential and used exclusively
for statistical purposes. In seeking this
balance it is inevitable to combine different
measures and actions: both legal, technical,
administrative and methodological dimensions
should be covered.
Lastly, elections
for a new Bureau will take place
this year, which is done every two years.
Mr. Svein Longva, Director General of
Statistics Norway, who is the current
Chairman of the Conference and has served
for eight years on the Bureau, will have
to step down. The UNECE secretariat is
grateful to Svein Longva for his contribution
to the work of the Conference and would
like to congratulate him on the achievements
of the CES under his leadership.
Mr. Chairman, I would
like to wish success in your deliberations.
Thank you for your attention.
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