1. Working Party on Fisheries Statistics 14 October 2013
Item IV.B Confidentiality issues (Document FISH/334)

2. Table of Contents
What is declared as confidential and what are the consequences?
What is the legal context ?
How to improve the situation?

3. What is declared as confidential ? (1/2)
Some landings data, but main problem for aquaculture data: since 2010, more and more data is declared as confidential (for "AQ2a – aquaculture production", 3 countries declared volume data as confidential in 2010 and 8 in 2010)
Doc FISH 321 (March 2012) stated "Member States have been increasingly transmitting data as confidential for fisheries and aquaculture in recent years. This is in part due to use of SDMX-ML as a transmission medium which allows more explicit flagging of confidential records than before"

4. What is declared as confidential ? (2/2)
Declaration of confidential data for aquaculture
2010
2011
Production (aq2a)
volume
BE, LT, SK (3/ :m)
BE, DK, DE, LT, AT, PL, SI, FI (8/29)
value
BE, DK, LT, SK (4/ :m)
BE, DK, DE, LT, AT, PL, SI, FI (8/ :m)
Eggs for consumption (aq2b)
vol/val
derogations
DK, DE, ES (3/9)
Input (aq3)
DE,MT (2/ :m)
Eggs for production (aq4a)
number
DE, FR, MT, AT, SI, SK (6)
Juvenile prod. (aq4b)
DE, IE, FR, MT, AT, PT, SK (7/25)
Structural data (aq5)
area
incomplete
BE, DE, IE, AT, PL (5/28)
1000 of M3
DE, PL (2/28)

5. What is the legal context?
Regulation 223/2009 on European Statistics:
confidential data is “data which allow statistical units to be identified, either directly or indirectly"
A statistical unit is “the basic observation unit, namely a natural person, a household, an economic operator and other undertakings"
data obtained from sources lawfully available to the public and which remain available to the public according to national legislation shall not be considered confidential

6. How to improve the situation?
Work further on the charter prepared by the Task Force and on the IT tool
Use the "Confidentiality flag" only when fully justified according to Regulation 223/2009 (Eurostat may ask for justifications)
Clarify what exactly is confidential (value and/or volume)
Countries may regroup confidential data into aggregates which are not confidential (aggregate species, _NK area, …)
Publication of main National or EU aggregates (for totals all specises, all methods, environments, areas, …) even if some underlying data is confidential)
Ask on a case by case basis if data can be published(SiF aquaculture)

7. Thank you for your attention!
Questions
The members of the WG are asked to give their opinion on:
the compliance monitoring of Eurostat,
the recommendations and rules to be applied for providing good quality data,
the proposed NK (Not Known) sub-area codes and on the cleaning of unofficial aggregates of area codes.
the pragmatic approach proposed by Eurostat as regard to the confidential data,
Thank you for your attention!