Regional Government Expenditure Berthold Feldmann Eurostat

Background (1) Increasing importance of sound and comparable information on the role of general government at a regional level In June 2007 DG REGIO proposed to launch a call for tender to find an external contractor that would collect detailed data on regional government expenditure Eurostat could dissuade them by offering to cover this task We can only keep the European Statistical System its privileged position as statistical data supplier for EU policies by doing something on this issue

Background (2) The Commission needs this information on public intervention at a regional level for a coherent cohesion policy Regional expenditure information will allow a better assessment of the leverage effects of Structural Funds expenditure Collecting regional government expenditure data is rooted in the ten year old project of regional government accounts (frozen some years ago) Existing data on government expenditure at national level (from national accounts) are of major interest to users national accountants have a developed set of definitions and standards

Project description Step 1: review the availability of annual regional general government expenditure data at NUTS level 2 Time span covered Which breakdown of government tasks Data sources Methodology used for the compilation of the data Step 2: thorough evaluation Step 3: start data transmission

Time-table Overview on state of play in MS March 2008 Interim report of an expert July 2008 Final report of an expert Dec. 2008 First data sent to Eurostat June 2009 Evaluation of results Sept. 2009 DG REGIO wants to use this data for the 5th Cohesion Report, to be published in 2010, drafted in 2009 !

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