The National Statistical Institute hosts the fifth meeting of the Group “Sponsorship on Communication” on 12 May 2011 at Arena di Serdica Residence Hotel in Sofia. The BNSI President, Mariana Kotzeva, is a member of the Group and actively participates in its work since its establishment in 2010. Other participants from Bulgaria will be the Director of European, International Cooperation and Coordination Directorate, Eleonora Avramova, and the expert from E-services Department, Sonya Zlatanova.

The Group was established by a mandate of the ESSC and is co-chaired by the President of the National Statistics Institute of Spain, Jaume García Villar, and Eurostat Director of Directorate D “External cooperation, communication and key indicators”, Pieter Everaers. Participant countries in this group are Spain, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Lithuania, Sweden, Romania, France, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, as well as Eurostat. The main objectives of the Group “Sponsorship on Communication” are: strengthening the visibility of the European Statistical System (ESS) and the reliability of the European Statistics as a whole; ESS to be perceived as a network of mutually connected organizations; acquainting users and the public with the products and services provided by the European statistics with the aim to be better understood; carrying out an active dialogue with users of statistical information. The discussions during the last meeting of the group were focused on actions to increase visibility: development of a common set of tables and other statistical information; ESS website; ESS logo.

The agenda for the fifth meeting in Sofia includes continuation of topics discussed during the previous meeting, as well as issues related to resuming of work on Press Network, discussions on projects related to satisfying users’ needs and increasing the confidence in statistical surveys, putting more efforts on acquainting users with the results of the work of the Sponsorship on measuring progress and improving quality in the field of dissemination and relations with users. Bulgaria, together with Romania and Lithuania, participates in a project related to the so called thematic websites.