Business Demography: Eurostat’s development project 17th Annual Round Table on Business Survey Frames Session 7 30/10/2003 Hartmut Schrör, Eurostat hartmut.schroer@cec.eu.int

Requirement Council of Lisbon targets High need for harmonised statistics on business demography at national and EU level Challenge: how to produce comparable data with the tools currently available, with limited burden and in a timely fashion

Methodological issues (1/2) Common methodology developed based on analysis of Business Register data Identification of real births and deaths according to SBS Commission regulation: elimination of inactive units matching economic activity and location name and location economic activity and name others as appropriate

Methodological issues (2/2) elimination of reactivations Survival 1) without changes (employment and/or turnover) 2) by take-over of a new enterprise Employment measured as head counts, yearly average Statistical unit: enterprise

Challenges and Developments coverage / thresholds lack of time series data legal basis factors of success false self-employment employment in death legal form breakdown stability of administrative sources

Status and Outlook First publications released in 2003 Extension to countries acceding EU in 2004 Further methodological work