Commission Decision of 17 September 2012 on Eurostat (2012/504/EU)

Article 8 Chief Statistician

1. The Director-General of Eurostat shall be regarded as the Chief Statistician.

2. The Chief Statistician shall:

(a) be in charge of the development, production and dissemination of European statistics within the Commission;

(b) be responsible for coordination of the development and production of other statistics as referred to in Articles 5(2) and 6(4);

(c) represent the Commission in international statistical forums, notably for the purposes of coordinating the statistical activities of the institutions and bodies of the Union as referred to in Article 6(3) of Regulation (EC) No 223/2009;

(d) chair the European Statistical System Committee referred to in Article 7 of Regulation (EC) No 223/2009;

(e) prepare the programmes referred to in Article 5(1) of this Decision in close consultation with other services of the Commission, taking into account as far as possible user needs and other relevant developments;

(f) liaise between the European Statistical System (ESS) and the European Statistical Governance Advisory Board in all matters relating to the implementation of the European statistics Code of Practice within the ESS as a whole.

3. Any service that intends to undertake activities involving the production of statistics shall consult the Chief Statistician at an early stage in the preparation of the activities concerned. The Chief Statistician may make recommendations in this regard. Initiatives not related to the development, production and dissemination of European statistics, especially in cases of specific inter-service agreements, shall fall entirely under the responsibility of the concerned service.