ESSPROS Working group Social Protection (9th-10th April 2014)

The meeting of two days of the working group “Social Protection” was organized by the Statistical department of the European Commission (ESSPROS) and was held in Luxembourg. Several changes, improvements and new approaches for collecting and analysing data, were proposed and discussed with the working group. The meeting was attended: by the representatives of the member state countries of Eurostat, DG EMPL, DG SANCO, DG ECFIN, SGI, UNICEF, OECD, ILO and Alphametrics consultant.

The participation of the ILO in this meeting is essential. The Social Security Inquiry is strongly connected with the ESSPROS database, which constitutes an important source of information for the Social Security Inquiry tool. On the other hand, the ESSPROS database structure, has been the basis to define the SSI structure, regarding the scheme characterization; and benefit classification. Thus, there is a strong interest for the ILO to follow up on the data collection; and contribute to the enhancements of ESSPROS.

Some of the discussed technical issues with the countries of the working group were: The possibility to differentiate benefits and beneficiaries into two categories - residents vs. non-residents, the possibility and methodology for the countries to present the scheme receipts by function, the consultation about the possibility to split schemes into government controlled and non-controlled, the concept of "scheme", confidentiality issues for data transmission, development of indicators to measure the efficiency and effectiveness of social protection spending and financing and the net and gross benefits calculation.

An important issue of discussion was the module on “Net benefits”. In order to measure the real value of social protection benefits (SPB) provided to recipients, the ESSPROS module on net SPB collects data on the average itemised tax and social contribution rates (AITRs and AISCRs) applicable to the gross benefits received. These rates are then applied to the gross data in order to calculate the net value of the benefits provided. A restricted approach is currently used to obtain the net benefits and an enlarged approach is under discussion and development. The net-restricted results, permit to estimate the difference between what is spent by the schemes (gross) and what is received by the recipients of social benefits (net-restricted).

Eurostat presented the main characteristics of the System of Health Accounts (SHA) and the increasing interest from the politicians to know how performances are the health systems. The main information which is collected is financing, providers and function (in what is spent). The initiative of Eurostat-OECD-WHO joint Health Account Questionnaire to reduce burden of data collection was also presented. Compulsory and voluntary financial schemes instead the private and public schemes classification has been used from 2011 to facilitate the linkage with ESSPROS.

The next steps were defined in the context of a future ESSPROS conference in November 2014. The conference focused on the user need was planned to be organized in Brussels jointly with Eurostat and DG EMPL with the primary aim of setting priorities for the strategic development of ESSPROS over the next five to ten years.