Session 1
European Statistics Code of Practice – Past, Present, Future
3 June 2026
11:00 – 12:30
ŠIBENIK II
Presentation title
The journey of the ESS CoP implementation - 20 years of challenges to enhance the future of official statistics
There is no doubt of the relevance and strategic position of the European Statistics Code of Practice at the heart of a national statistical office and its national system in the European Statistical System.
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Over the years, since its first edition in 2005, it reinforced the already national status of professional independence by law, impartiality and quality of processes and products at large, providing then a systematic and concise approach across the European Statistical System, from which we, statistical offices, all profited from, allowing also to strengthen the cooperation amongst the European Statistical System for the CoP implementation and its related activities .
It has been a driving force to enhance and develop other related frameworks and tools for guiding purposes and peer reviews, such as the ESS Quality Assurance Framework.
From the national perspective this quality framework and approach have been a reference, a guide and an inspiration for the implementation of Quality Management Systems at organizational level, in a way that we could not have aspired throughout the last 20 years.
The paper and presentation will focus the main strengths and changes in the European Statistics Code of Practice and how they impacted the strategic directions and daily work of a statistical office, in particular the challenge of reinforcing the brand of European official statistics and ultimately the trust and credibility of the organizations involved in their production, and what challenges and expectations it poses to the near future with further revisions.
The presentation will navigate throughout the national standpoint of statistics Portugal but also the experience of being a peer reviewer in the 2021-2023 round.
Maria João Zilhão
Statistics Portugal
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Member of the Management Board of Statistics Portugal (INE) since January 2018, after having served as the Director of the Planning, Control and Quality Unit at INE, since 2007. Degree in Economics and a master’s degree in Statistics and Information Management. She started working at INE as a statistician in economic agriculture statistics in 1990. She has been involved in Quality Management at the ESS since 1999, coordinating the implementation of INE’s Quality Management System, that got its certification process along the ISO norm 9001 in 2024. Member of several groups in Quality management at ESS (e.g. ESS QAF, ESS CoP revision; Peer Reviews methodology; Chair Expert Team in the 3rd round). Trainer in quality in statistics; international cooperation in quality management. Chair od the Council Working Party on Statistics in 2021 – EU Portuguese Presidency. Member of the Programme Committee of previous European Quality Conferences; host of the Q2024.
Presentation title
Two Decades of the European Statistics Code of Practice - reflections after the 20th anniversary
Since the time of the finalization of the Third round of European Statistical System (ESS) peer reviews in 2023, there are on-going discussion in the ESS about possible revision of the European Statistics Code of Practice (ES CoP) and which timeline as well as format potential revision might entail.
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This aspect was especially emphasized in 2025, which marked 20th anniversary of ES CoP, adopted in February 2005.
Eurostat, along with national statistical authorities from EU and EFTA countries, has marked the 20th anniversary of the ES CoP with various events and communication throughout the year, having its peak at the high-level event organized by Eurostat and held in Brussels on 6 and 7 November 2025. This event included the heads of Eurostat, the European Central Bank’s Directorate-General for Statistics, and the national statistical institutes (NSIs) that compose the European Statistical System, as well as the NSIs of the enlargement countries. Chairs and members of the European Statistical Advisory Committee (ESAC), European Statistical Governance Advisory Board (ESGAB), the EU’s Economic and Financial Sub-Committee on Statistics, European Broadcasting Union, and other national statistical authorities also took part.
Main sessions of the event were dealing with celebration of memories (touching upon how the story of the European Statistics Code of Practice began and how it has inspired changes to the EU Law on European statistics together with establishment of the ESGAB), crucial aspect of professional independence of national statistical authorities and how it is to be ensured in practice and most importantly, perspectives of ES CoP in the future and discussions on possible third revision of ES CoP.
This presentation will provide summary of the event’s rich discussions with emphasize on need to reflect fast and profound changes in the future revision, including the aspects of artificial intelligence. It will provide further opportunity to look ahead and reflect on the future role of the Code of Practice in further strengthening trust in European statistics and in enhancing their quality. Another presentation aspect would be a follow up on the event that has taken place since November 2025 including current and latest discussions at ESS in this area.
The interventions during the session together with responding discussion can be beneficial for the future discussions and directions on the update of the whole ESS common quality framework.
Avis Beneš
Eurostat
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Ms Avis Beneš has a longstanding career in international and EU institutions (European Commission, EEAS, EU Delegations, Office of the High Representative in BiH, international crime court, EU electoral monitoring missions), in particular in political, economic, statistical and communication domains, including long experience in EU enlargement and accession process. In the period 2018-2023 she was heading the Eurostat unit dealing with statistical cooperation, concretely with enlargement and neighbourhood countries as well as cooperation with Africa (including development and support in areas of quality in statistics). For two years (2024-2025) she was Head of Unit of Eurostat unit in charge of strategy and programming, European Statistical System (ESS) governance, ESS advisory bodies as well as quality (former task force peer review). Currently she manages Eurostat unit “Quality; ESAC and ESGAB Secretariat”. She holds MA degrees in economics and international relations & European studies.
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Presentation title
From Statistics Producers to Data Stewards: Rethinking the Code of Practice for a Digital Age
National Statistical Institutes across Europe are facing a fundamental transformation.
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They must adapt their long-established methods to an increasingly digital, fast-moving society—while at the same time safeguarding the quality, integrity, and independence of official statistics. In essence, statistical insti-tutes are evolving from traditional data producers into Data Stewards, expected to respond flexibly to complex societal changes.
In recent years, many statistical institutes - including the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (FSO) - have been entrusted with new responsibilities in data management and governance, data science, and Open Government Data. These developments also support policy goals such as the once-only principle, which aims to reduce the administrative burden on businesses and citizens through the multiple reuse of data.
Against this backdrop, the FSO, together with other actors in Switzerland’s system of official data and statistics, revised its national Code of Practice—the Charter of Official Statistics of Switzerland. The revised Charter explicitly enables and encourages statistical services to actively assume Data Steward roles in data management and data science, and to strengthen collaboration in these fields. A more detailed discussion of the background for revising the Charter will be presented in a separate session.
Looking ahead, the FSO believes that a future revision of the European Code of Practice should pre-serve continuity with the existing framework, while also adequately reflecting these emerging areas of activity. At the same time, it should explicitly address the associated ethical considerations and ac-tively encourage statistical authorities to engage with them.
This presentation explores the new roles currently being taken on within Switzerland’s system of offi-cial data and statistics, how these roles are embedded in the revised Charter, and how they are intend-ed to be governed ethically and legally. Building on this experience, it highlights innovative roles and elements that could inform and enrich a future revision of the European Code of Practice.
Markus Baumann
Federal Statistical Office FSO
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As deputy head of the staff division and head of the quality and legal section at the Federal Statistical Office (FSO) of Switzerland, Markus Baumann leads and supports a wide range of topics in official statistics. Among other roles, he also serves as the national coordinator for the peer reviews. A social scientist by training, he has been working at the FSO for more than 20 years in various functions.
Presentation title
Ensuring the relevance of the ES Code of Practice in the evolving production system of official statistics
The European Statistics Code of Practice (ES CoP) represents the cornerstone of European Statistical System (ESS) quality framework.
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From its adoption in 2005 the ES CoP maintained its relevance and effectiveness in supporting the development of quality management systems in the ESS and beyond. This result was achieved thanks to the timely revisions that incorporated important updates and extensions in the ES CoP and also to the development of supporting tools, such as the ESS Quality Assurance framework (ESS QAF).
In the last revision of the ES CoP (2017) and of the ESS QAF (2019), great focus was given, e.g., to stimulate the use of administrative data in producing statistics, promoting data integration. To this aim, specific Indicators and Methods were added. After some years, the effect of the introduction of these elements is evident, at least in Istat: e.g. multisource statistics are the basis of statistical production.
Now, the statistical production paradigm is still evolving, with the use of new data sources, often privately held data, to produce statistics. The EU Regulation 2024/3018, amending EC Regulation No 223/2009, posed a necessary legal basis for the use privately held data on European statistics, and there is now the need to revise the quality framework to drive, once again, the change, while assuring quality.
A thorough review of the Principle and Indicators of the ES CoP and of the Methods of the ESS QAF was carried out in the context of the Multi-MNO project (https://cros.ec.europa.eu/landing-page/multi-mno-project), a Eurostat funded service contract aimed at developing a standard pipeline for statistics based on Mobile Network Operator (MNO) data. MNO data are promising privately held data for official statistics production in many domains. One of the project tasks, led by Istat, was the development of a quality framework to accompany such pipeline.
The review was aimed to verify the gaps in the compliance of statistics based on MNO data with ES CoP, and to identify where the CoP and QAF could be improved to better represent the peculiarities of statistics based on MNO (or privately held) data and underpin the challenge of integrating their use in official statistics. The analysis enhanced that while existing ES CoP principles seems to be still adequate, indicators and methods could be extended or added.
The results of the review will be presented with the intention to provide useful hints on the possible direction for the next ES CoP revision.
Giorgia Simeoni
Istat
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Giorgia Simeoni works for Istat, Italian National Statistical Institute, since 2001, and has been appointed as Istat Quality manager in September 2020. She has always worked in the field of quality and reference metadata, has been responsible for implementing quality reporting at Istat. She is involved in European and international quality and standards related working groups, like the UN Expert Group on National Quality Assurance Framework and the UNECE Supporting Standards Group.In recent years has worked on the development and implementation of quality frameworks for multisource statistics and for statistics based on new data sources. She has also a relevant experience in cooperation projects related to quality topics and is also a trainer in ESTP courses. She is graduated in statistics, demographic and social sciences and holds a master degree in sources, tools and methods for social research.
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