At the 95th Conference of the Directors General of the National Statistical Institutes of the EU Member States, held within the period 30.09 – 01.10. 2009 in Malta, Assoc. Prof. Mariana Kotzeva – BNSI President accepted the honour to host the 96th DGINS and the 6th ESSC meeting in Sofia from the Director General of NSO in Malta – Mr. Michael Pace Ross.
Short video presentation of Bulgaria and BNSI attracted the attention of all participants. Afterwards, Ms. Mariana Kotzeva personally invited all participants to the Conference in Sofia. The invitation was accepted with great satisfaction.
During the informal discussions at the Conference, it was easy to notice the great interest to Bulgaria being the host of the important international forum and the participants expressed their best wishes for successful organization and carrying out of the 96th DGINS.
The DGINS Conference was opened by Mr. Michael Pace Ross – Director General of the NSO of Malta. Mr. Lawrence Gonzi – Prime Minister of Malta welcomed the participants and delivered a very interesting speech on the main policy priorities related to migration in Malta. The Conference was attended not only by the Heads of the Statistical Offices of the EU Member States, the candidate countries, the potential candidate countries and the EFTA countries, but also by Mr. Paul Cheung – Director of the United Nations Statistics Division, Ms. Lidia Bratanova – Director of UNSD, UNECE, representatives of the European Central Bank and other.
The main theme of the Conference was “Migration – Statistical Mainstreaming”. It was held in three sessions, at which issues on the demands for information on migrants, new approaches in social statistics surveys and exchange of migration data between countries and institutions were discussed. The forum was closed by a roundtable discussion on the future perspectives of migration statistics, chaired by Mr. Walter Radermacher- Eurostat Director Genera, while Ms. Kotzeva was officially invited as a member together with the Heads of the Statistical Offices of Germany, Denmark, Italy and Portugal. She made a short presentation, covering the most important issues on including the migration statistics as an integral part to all statistical branches.
The Agenda of the 2nd ESSC meeting included 4 issues on comitology in the field of population census, migration statistics, MEETS and structural business statistics, on which a positive vote was received.
Lively discussions were carried out on the proposal for Regulation in the field of tourism statistics and the Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament and the Council on the production method of EU statistics: a vision for the next decade, as the issues are considered of prime importance for the future of EU statistics. Main moments in the proposed documents include: firstly, new requirements for statistics will continue to increase in terms of both quantity and quality; secondly, simplifying and improving the regulatory environment of EU businesses and citizens; thirdly, new ICT tools continue to be developed in order to improve efficiency, reduce burden, and enhance statistical quality. The main intention and strategic direction of this vision paper is to improve the efficiency of statistical production.
The meeting was closed by adopting the so-called “Declaration of Malta” for including the statistics of migration as a priority area within the frames of the European Statistical System.
