The NSI gathered in Sofia the Directors General of the National Statistical Institutes of the EU Member States

The 96^th Conference of the Directors General of the National Statistical Institutes of the EU Member States (DGINS) has ended. During the three-day forum, issues about the priorities for the next five-year Community Statistical Programme were discussed and the trends for the European Statistical System up to 2020 were set up.

On 30^th September 2010 the Conference was opened officially by the Prime Minister of Bulgaria Mr. Boyko Borissov.

On the main theme - “Measuring progress, well-being and sustainable development” the Directors General of the National Statistical Institutes of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro and FYROM also joined the Conference.

Most discussions were provoked by the issues on measuring:

- Households perspective and distributional aspects of income, consumption;

- Environmental sustainability;

- Multidimensional measures of quality of life;

- Development of European Statistics in the context of the “Europe 2020” Strategy.

On October 1^st 2010 the 6^th Meeting of the European Statistical System Committee (ESSC) and the Joint Committee Meeting EU-Switzerland were held.

On the final briefing after the Conference Mr. Radermacher emphasized to the reporters that the unified methodology in EU Member States guarantees the quality of statistical data and the main concern of Eurostat is to monitor the implementation and the independence of the National Statistical Institutes in the collection, processing and dissemination of data.

The Director General of Eurostat pointed out that the Bulgarian statistics works entirely in accordance with the established European methodology and is a respected and trustworthy partner. In response to a question asked by the journalists he gave a 5 out of 6 mark to Bulgarian statistics, thus leaving room for improvement.

The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Mr. Simeon Djankov welcomed the last meeting – the Partnership Group Meeting, and wished success to the heads of the European Statistical Institutes in the implementation of the decisions taken during the Conference.

The next 97^th DGINS Conference will be held in late September 2011 in Germany.