1.For the purposes of this Regulation, the following quality assessment dimensions shall apply to the data to be transmitted:
‘relevance’ shall refer to the degree to which statistics meet current and potential needs of the users;
‘accuracy’ shall refer to the closeness of estimates to the unknown true values;
‘timeliness’ shall refer to the time lag between the availability of the information and the event or phenomenon it describes;
‘punctuality’ shall refer to the time lag between the date of the release of the data and the target date when it should have been delivered;
‘accessibility’ and ‘clarity’ shall refer to the conditions and modalities by which users can obtain, use and interpret data;
‘comparability’ shall refer to the measurement of the impact of differences in applied statistical concepts and measurement tools and procedures when statistics are compared between geographical areas, sectoral domains or over time; and
‘coherence’ shall refer to the adequacy of the data to be reliably combined in different ways and for various uses.
2.Every three years, and for the first time by 1 July 2011, Member States shall provide the Commission (Eurostat) with a report on the quality of the data transmitted.
3.The quality reports shall describe:
the organisation of the surveys covered by this Regulation and the methodology applied;
the level of precision achieved for the sample surveys referred to in this Regulation;
the quality of sources other than surveys which are used; and
the quality of the forecasts referred to in this Regulation.
4.Member States shall inform the Commission of any methodological or other change which would have a considerable effect on the statistics. This shall be done not later than three months after such change enters into force.
5.The principle that additional costs and burdens remain within reasonable limits shall be taken into account.