ESSPROS CONFERENCE. 50th Anniversary and priorities for future developments (19th November 2014)

The European System of Social Protection Statistics (ESSPROS) reached its 50th anniversary in 2013, which makes this year a particularly relevant moment to shed light on possible further development of the ESSPROS system. In view of this, a conference was organised on November 19th 2014 to strengthen the dialogue, interaction and reciprocal understanding between ESSPROS users and producers, notably with regard to possible future ESSPROS developments. The conference was based in particular from the results recently collected through a questionnaire posted on the Eurostat website.

The conference contributed to a more structured evaluation of the current use of the presently available ESSPROS statistics. In addition, the conference contributed to clarify the concrete benefits expected from possible future ESSPROS developments. This leaded to identification and possible first rough assessment of priorities (also including first discussions on the corresponding costs at national and European levels).

A list of possible future ESSPROS developments was identified. They were classified into four categories depending of the priority: very high, high, medium, low. The very high priorities identified very two: Improve dissemination of data by scheme and the implementation of links between ESSPROS and other sources of data, specially the National accounts (ESA-2010). It was mentioned that the very high or high priority could imply the necessity to develop other low or medium priorities. Furthermore, some work have already started on some the identified priorities, therefore, the cost to complete such residual development would be less costly. The improvements are oriented to disseminate better quality and timeliness data in order to obtain more accurate policy recommendations and in a timely way.