Labour MEP Prof. Edward Scicluna this week welcomed the European Commission’s proposal to re-write the EU’s rules on statistical governance. The Commission’s proposal takes on board a series of recommendations from Prof Scicluna’s report entitled “Towards robust quality management for European Statistics”, which was approved by the European Parliament in March.

Prof Scicluna, who leads Parliament’s Economic Committee on European statistics, and who earlier this week presented a separate report on the five-year European Statistical Framework in Strasbourg, welcomed the proposal commenting that: “Following the debt crisis we are now all acutely aware that accurate and reliable statistics provide the building blocks for policy making. The crisis in Greece started when officials discovered that statistical fraud had taken place. I am pleased to see that many of my report’s recommendations are included in the draft legislation which, when amended and adopted by Parliament, will ensure that such a systemic failure never happens again.”