Quality improvement of intra-EU trade data in the context of the micro-data exchange (SMP-ESS-2021-ITGS-MDE-H1-5713)

ended

The need for further administrative burden reduction of Intrastat was pursuit in the SIMSTAT (Single Market Statistics) project, containing several measures aiming at a significant burden reduction. One of these measures concerned the enabling of the exchange of enterprise level data on intra-EU exports between Member States. The reasoning behind is to open an additional data source which would allow Member States to reuse the intra-EU dispatches micro-data of other Member States for the purpose of checking and/or producing their own intra-EU arrivals’ figures. The micro-data exchange on intra-EU exports (MDE) is now a reality and will be mandatory as of January 2022 data, according to the new EBS Regulation. The main results expected under this action are related with the quality improvement of ITGS data, namely Intra-EU trade data, based on the new data source to be available under the MDE – micro-data exchange. The access to this new data source will allow a more complete, coherent and regular comparison analysis between national data collected on imports and mirror data on exports from the partner Member States (MS). With the exchanged micro-data on intra-EU trade, the main objectives of this action will be the identification of the main asymmetries, the participation (with the concerned MS) in joint investigations regarding asymmetries ensuring its follow-up and resolution whenever possible and the definition of future procedures to ensure a consistent and regular data analysis on asymmetries, to achieve the main goal of improving ITGS data and therefore ensure the future re-use of the MDE for the compilation of national intra-EU imports. Under this grant, Statistics Portugal will apply for the three themes available, regarding reconciliation exercises, reducing asymmetries by improving the accuracy of estimates and setting up an asymmetry detection and resolution system.