Legal basis

"STATEC", acronym for National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies, was founded in 1962 as a result of the merger between the General Office of Statistics and the Economic Studies and Documentation Service. It was reformed by the Law of July 10, 2011 (Pdf, 232 Kb).

This law specifies the missions of STATEC and its internal organisation, and it defines its framework and the careers of the employees and civils servants. Articles 13 and 17 state two special clauses, which are the legal obligation of responding and the statistical confidentiality:

Statistical obligation

Public administrations, individuals and legal entities are required to provide the requested statistical information. This obligation is backed by the right of investigation of STATEC’s agents. Refusal to provide the information within the deadline or the provision of false information is punishable by fine.

Statistical confidentiality

The information collected by STATEC can only be used for statistical purposes. Any administrative or fiscal use is forbidden. The specific information of surveyed individuals and legal entities may in no case be disclosed. STATEC’s officials and representatives are held personally liable for the strict observance of the statistical confidentiality, subject to disciplinary and penal sanctions.

Status

STATEC is an administration under the authority of the Ministry of Economy. Nevertheless, it is scientifically and professionally independent, i.e. that STATEC sets its work plan in conformity to the national and European statistical legislation, and generates and disseminates its data in complete neutrality. The principle of the scientific independence is formally listed in the Treaty of Amsterdam (Art. 285) which states that ‘the statistics shall be produced in compliance with standards on impartiality, reliability, objectivity, scientific independence, cost-effectiveness and statistical confidentiality’. This principle is further defined in the European Statistics Code of Practice. The European Statistics Code of Practice was first adopted by the Statistical Programme Committee (SPC) in 2005. The Code was revised by the European Statistical System Committee (ESSC) in 2011 and 2017. The latter revised Code has been endorsed by the ESSC on 16 November 2017.