WRITTEN QUESTION No. 2085/98 by Alexandros ALAVANOS to the Commission. Statistics on Greece
C 182/2 Official Journal of the European Communities EN 28. 6. 1999 from the Fund. The results of the study point to a strong positive relationship between infrastructure and private investment, to significant long-term employment effects and to important spillovers between the regions of the cohesion countries and their neighbours. The regional income and employment effects estimated by the models presented by the LSE exceed those anticipated by traditional cost-benefit methods. The annual reports on the Cohesion fund include extensive comment on the evaluation process. A comprehensive publication on the LSE study is in preparation. (1) COM(96) 542 final. (1999/C 182/002) WRITTEN QUESTION E-2085/98 by Alexandros Alavanos (GUE/NGL) to the Commission (10 July 1998) Subject: Statistics on Greece Under the title of ‘Weekly Europe Selected Statistics No 1055’, ‘Europe’ of 18 May 1998 republished from Eurostat Statistics in Focus, Economy and Finance 12/98 data on public and private investment in the Member States of the EU. The figures, however, do not include data on Greece. 1. Why does data on Greece not appear? 2. If the lack of data is due to their not being provided by the Member State, what measures is the Commission taking to address the problem so that it is possible to produce statistics for all the Member States of the EU? Answer by Mr de Silguy on behalf of the Commission (15 September 1998) The publication to which ‘Europe’ referred on 18 May 1998 was issue No 1998/12 of the series entitled ‘Statistics in Focus 7 Economy and Finance’, which dealt with government and private sector investment in the European Union 1980-96. The issue provided an abridged version of some of the data appearing in the publication entitled ‘National Accounts ESA: Detailed Tables by Sector 7 Non-Financial Transactions. ’ The publication at European level of reliable and comparable data on gross fixed capital formation broken down by sector of investment depends on the availability of a consistent and exhaustive set of detailed statistical information. Until now, the Member States have always transmitted data on the non-financial transactions of the institutional sectors, especially general government bodies, on a voluntary basis. In the absence of particular data for Greece, it was not possible to include this Member State in the issue of ‘Statistics in Focus’ to which the Honourable Member referred. There should be a significant improvement in the situation in the coming years, after the application from 1 January 1999 of Council Regulation (EC) 2223/96 of 25 June 1996 on the European system of national and regional accounts in the Community (1), which requires the Member States to provide each year a set of sectoral data from the national accounts. (1) OJ L 310, 31. 11. 1996