Changes from report parliamentary committee draft to plenary report

EXPLANATORY STATEMENT

Your rapporteur welcomes the recommendation of the European Central Bank to amend Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 in order to take into account the significant changes in the collection, compilation, dissemination and use of statistical information by the ESCB owing to the digital transformation.

As ECB stresses in its recommendation, these changes have led to a demand for timelier, more frequent and more detailed statistical information, and also offered new possibilities for a more efficient collection of statistical information. These demands and opportunities should be, indeed, balanced by minimising the associated risks. Among these risks, your rapporteur would like to stress the importance of minimising the risk of breach of confidentiality or misuse of confidential information for purposes other than those consented to between the parties involved. For this purpose, this Regulation should be further amended to reduce any risk of breach of confidential statistical information and bring adequate safeguards, in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

In addition, ECB recommends increasing the amount of sanctions in case of failure to comply with obligations resulting from ECB regulations or decisions defining and imposing statistical reporting requirements. Your rapporteur welcomes this amendment and suggests that ECB updates the amount of these sanctions every five years in accordance with the inflation rate of the euro area. The periodical review of these amounts may avoid that these sanctions lose their deterrent effect and effectiveness overtime.