Coordination meeting of the Policy Group on Statistical Cooperation

The two-day meeting of the Policy Group on Statistical Cooperation of the Western Balkans and Turkey ends today in Struga, where, in the presence of senior representatives of Eurostat and the Directorate for Enlargement of the European Commission, the challenges faced by the statistical institutions of the candidate countries and their key role in the process of negotiations for accession to the European Union.

Eurostat representatives presented the latest changes in Regulation 223/2009, and one of the most important is the one which provides for statistical institutions to have access to administrative data sources and private data sets that allows them to become faster and more efficient in the production of existing statistics, but also in the production of new, experimental statistics that would respond to the increasing and more complex needs of users. At the same time, the changes in the Regulation enable the statistical institutions to play a key role in national data management frameworks.

At the meeting it was discussed also about the future round of peer reviews, and it was adopted the methodology by which the peer reviews will be conducted in the candidate countries in the period 2025-2027.

The representatives of the statistical institutions of the candidate countries for EU membership presented their best practices and experiences and exchanged opinions for greater and more comprehensive cooperation in order to deal with the challenges in the most efficient possible way.

The host of the meeting, the State Statistical Office of the Republic of North Macedonia, presented the current state of the institution and the plans for further development, and also presented the coordinating role that the SSO has in the National Statistical System.