Eurostat cleans up

Europe’s troubled statistics agency Eurostat has cut back on external contracts and training after being rocked by financial scandal.

Luxembourg-based EU statisticians have had “missions” to outside seminars slashed by 35 per cent.

And the EU agency is to have a new focus on its key work of producing figures in-house rather than relying on contracts with outside firms to crunch numbers.

“We need to tighten our belt,” said Eurostat’s director general Michel Vanden Abeele on Monday.

“We all prefer to produce statistics than manage small contracts.”

A shake-up of the way Europe produces information will see some statistical “blips in wine and other sectors” but otherwise it will be business as usual in 2004, assured the Eurostat chief.

Fraud and financial mismanagement at Eurostat have rocked the European Commission with millions of euros disappearing into irregular bank accounts.

Under Vanden Abeele’s new regime all new external contracts will be “double signature”. “Everything comes across my desk,” he said.

There will be extra cash for the agency to clean up its act with Eurostat’s budget for 2004 rising from €46 to €50 million.

Vanden Abeele, who took over Eurostat last July, is reporting on progress on a weekly basis to EU economics commissioner Pedro Solbes.

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