1.For the purposes of this Regulation, the following quality criteria shall apply to the data to be transmitted:
‘relevance’, which refers to the degree to which statistics meet current and potential needs of the users;
‘accuracy’, which refers to the closeness of estimates to the unknown true values;
‘timeliness’, which refers to the period between the availability of the information and the event or phenomenon it describes;
‘punctuality’, which refers to the delay between the date of the release of the data and the target date (the date by which the data should have been delivered);
‘accessibility’ and ‘clarity’, which refer to the conditions and modalities by which users can obtain, use and interpret data;
‘comparability’, which refers to the measurement of the impact of differences in applied statistical concepts, measurement tools and procedures when statistics are compared between geographical areas, sectoral domains or over time;
‘coherence’, which refers 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 October 2011, Member States shall provide the Commission (Eurostat) with reports on the quality of the data transmitted.
3.The quality report, using the quality criteria referred to in paragraph 1, 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; and
the quality of sources other than surveys which are used.
4.Member States shall inform the Commission of any methodological or other change which might have a considerable effect on the statistics. This shall be done not later than three months after this change enters into force.
5.The principle that additional costs and burdens remain within reasonable limits shall be taken into account.