Improve data and statistics for decisions-makers in the Eastern Partnership region

The six countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine, share a common past and their administrative systems have many commonalities. All of the countries, to a varying degree, face a number of common economic, political and social challenges.

The relationship between the EU and Eastern Partnership (EaP) countries is governed by the Eastern Partnership which was launched in 2009 and revised in 2017.

EU statistical standards are among the most elaborate. Therefore, the European Union seeks to support the six Eastern Partnership countries in their efforts to align their statistical systems with European standards.

The European Commission therefore funded the Statistics Through Eastern Partnership (STEP) programme, which is managed by Eurostat and implemented by Expertise France, in collaboration with the national statistical institutes of EU Member States : Insee (France), ISTAT (Italy), KSH (Hungary), Statistics Denmark and Statistics Lithuania.

At the occasion of the closing of the STEP program, Expertise France reviews the results of this program.

Support fact-based decision for better decisions in the public and the private sector

The focus of STEP has been to provide a regional perspective on statistics to the EaP countries[1]. The regional perspective is twofold:

• EU Member State experiences on the actual implementation of the Acquis Communautaire as well as manuals and guidelines in the area of statistics;
• Eastern Partnership experiences on the implementation of EU manuals and guidelines where the countries learn from each other on how this has been implemented in countries similar to their own.

The STEP programme has supported several stages of the statistical value chain :

• Modern digital data collection tools (online reporting, improving response rates)
• Data processing methodologies (improved sampling techniques, software training in R and Stata)
• Improved data methodologies in calculating GDP, employment, time-use, transport, energy consumption
• Improved coordination of the national statistics system by support to the law on official statistics and adherence to the European Statistics Code of Practice
• Data publishing (efforts to get journalists and statisticians to understand each other better in order to improve fact-based decision making)  

Concrete results were made in the statisctics field

The STEP program supported the partner countries in 16 areas of statistics and cross-cutting issues, and the regional format made it possible for the countries to learn from best practices from EU Member States and best practices from their peers in the other partner countries as well as increased cooperation. The support was not limited to national statistical institute but also other producers of statistics.

Considerable improvements have been made in the development of statistics in the EaP countries in three main areas: national accounts, business statistics including statistical business registers, and energy statistics. Through activities in other statistical areas (public finance, purchasing power parity, transport, etc.) the five countries have become familiar with European and international standards and are ready to develop new statistics in these areas.

STEP supported two pilot surveys through the deployment of technical assistance: the APTUS time use survey in Armenia and the labour force survey (LFS) in Azerbaijan. The technical assistance deployed helped to build capacity in survey methodologies (sampling, questionnaires, manuals, guidelines).

About the cross-cutting issues. As communication of statistics is important for improving public policies, STEP activities have enabled statisticians and journalists to be trained to better communicate and master data from the National Statistical Systems (NSS). Training has also been provided for countries to produce administrative data and for researchers to use them. The programme also enabled countries to understand how to coordinate national statistical systems.

The technical cooperation coordinated by Expertise France played a role in the implementation of better statistics policies by our partner countries.