10 Statistics ~
| (34914)
9396/13
COM(13) 247
| Draft Regulation amending Regulation (EU) No. 691/2011 on European environmental economic accounts
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| Legal base | Article 338(1) TFEU; co-decision; QMV
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| Document originated | 2 May 2013
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| Deposited in Parliament | 13 May 2013
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| Department | Office for National Statistics
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| Basis of consideration | EM of 24 May 2013
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| Previous Committee Report | None
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| Discussion in Council | Not known
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| Committee's assessment | Politically important
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| Committee's decision | Not cleared; further information requested
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Background
10.1 Environmental accounts are "satellite accounts"
to the main National Accounts — that is extensions to the
National Accounts which allow for analysis of the wider impact
of economic change, in this case the interaction of the economy
with the environment. The accounts use similar concepts to those
employed in the National Accounts and reflect the recommended
EU and United Nations frameworks for developing such accounts.
Regulation (EU) No 691/2011, the Environmental Accounts Regulation,
introduced modules for three such satellite accounts — air
emissions accounts, environmentally related taxes and economy-wide
material flow accounts. The Regulation provided for the possibility
of additional modules.
The document
10.2 With this draft Regulation the Commission proposes introduction
of three additional modules of accounts:
- environmental protection expenditure accounts;
- environmental goods and services sector accounts;
and
- physical energy flow accounts.
10.3 "Environmental protection expenditure"
means the economic resources devoted by resident units[47]
to environmental protection. Environmental protection includes
all activities and actions which have as their main purpose the
prevention, reduction and elimination of pollution as well as
any other degradation of the environment and includes measures
taken in order to restore the environment after it has been degraded.
"Environmental goods and services sector" means those
production activities of a national economy that generate environmental
products. "Environmental products" are products that
have been produced for the purpose of environmental protection
and resource management. "Resource management" includes
the preservation, maintenance and enhancement of the stock of
natural resources and hence safeguarding against depletion. "Physical
energy flow accounts" means consistent compilations of the
physical energy flows into national economies, the flows within
the economy and the outputs to other economies or to the environment.
The Government's view
10.4 The Minister for Civil Society, Cabinet Office
(Mr Nick Hurd), says that the Government supported the 2011 Regulation
and is engaged at the working level in designing these future
modules. He comments that:
- environmental protection expenditure
accounts are used by the Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs to monitor the level of spending on protecting the
environment by different sectors of the economy;
- the main user is the Government;
- physical energy flow accounts are used by the
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to monitor
and understand changes in resource efficiency; and
- the Department for Energy and Climate Change
is interested in growth, investment opportunities and green job
creation of low carbon industries to inform Government; low carbon
industries being a sub-sector of environmental goods and services.
10.5 As for the proposal itself the Minister tells
us that:
- there is a difficulty with
the reference years and transmission deadlines in the proposal;
- as drafted, the UK and other Member States will
be obliged to begin collecting data from respondents in advance
of the agreement of the draft Regulation by the Council and the
European Parliament, in order to have data for reference years
that pre-date the year in which the Regulation is made;
- the Government will seek amendments to the proposal
that will make transmission of data voluntary, for the years up
to and including the one in which the Regulation is made;
- there are financial implications for the Office
for National Statistics, as the department with the primary responsibility
for collecting and compiling the data for the new modules;
- a recent feasibility study on the environmental
goods and services sector accounts module found that the Office
will not be able to comply with the Regulation using existing
official data sources;
- the impact assessment will become more precise
as the feasibility studies develop and as the final version of
the proposal emerges in negotiation in the Council and the European
Parliament — a final impact assessment will be produced
when the final design of the modules is known and the methods
for obtaining the data required for these modules decided;
- the Government aims to meet the requirements
as much as possible from existing sources and has sought in the
development stages to reduce the requirements which would require
significant extra collections; and
- the Government is supportive of the proposal
due to the value of these new modules for national policy objectives
and for international comparisons and will remain supportive provided
the impact assessment shows the benefits outweigh the additional
costs of collecting and compiling the data required for these
modules.
Conclusion
10.6 We note the Government's conditional support
for this measure. So before considering the matter further we
wish to hear about progress in the negotiations in securing voluntary
transmission of data during the preparatory period and in limiting
the costs of the proposal, in relation to its benefits. Meanwhile
the document remains under scrutiny.
47 A resident unit (for instance a business, a charity,
a government department or a private individual) is one which
has a centre of economic interest in the economic territory of
a country for more than a year. Back
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