Project description

Title: Statistical Cooperation between the EU and Mediterranean Partner Countries (MEDSTAT)
Commissioned by: European Commission
Financier: European Commission
Country: Mediterranean partner countries participating in the Mediterranean-European Development Agreement (MEDA)
Overall term: January 2006 to September 2009

Context

The Mediterranean-European Development Agreement (MEDA) was launched with the Barcelona Declaration (1995), part of the Barcelona Process. Its aim is to further relationships between the EU and the partner countries. Connections between Mediterranean countries are extended at the same time. The 27 EU member states and the 10 Mediterranean countries of Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, the Palestinian Territories, the Syrian Arabic Republic, Tunisia and Turkey are involved (data 2008).

The partners have been extending their cooperation in the field of statistics since 1996. Financed by the EU programme MEDA, the regional statistical cooperation programme MEDSTAT draws the activities together and aims to improve harmonisation and comparability in different statistical sectors.

Objective

Up-to-date, reliable, informative and high-quality statistics required for political decision making and responsible state governance are available to the MEDA Mediterranean partner countries.

Approach

Coherence, harmonisation and dissemination of data in the following statistical sectors lies at the centre of MEDSTAT: trade in goods and services, transport, migration, tourism, environment, national accounts, social statistics, energy and agriculture.

The activities include:

• Institutional and inter-institutional strengthening of the national statistical offices and statistical systems in the Mediterranean partner countries.
• Harmonising statistical data in line with international norms. This will make figures more easily comparable with those from member states of the EU and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
• Setting up databases and exchanging data between national statistical offices in the EU and Mediterranean and in particular with the Statistical Office of the European Communities (Eurostat).
• Improving public impact and awareness of the activities, results and data carried out or produced by the programme.

The national statistical offices of the 10 Mediterranean partner countries are MEDSTAT’s primary partners. They provide data specific to their country.

Professional training events in the field of statistics are organised by the programme. In addition, technical support for the information systems in institutes and other bodies generating statistics is also provided.

Three agencies support MEDSTAT on behalf of the EU. Working alongside GTZ are the Groupement d’Intérêt Public Assistance au Développement des Échanges en Technologies Économiques et Financière (GIP-Adetef) in France, and Agmin Italy s.r.l. in Italy.

GTZ services include overall programme coordination, heading a consortium of MEDSTAT contractors and providing training. The company also provides information systems and distributes publications and statistics.

Further information

• Local Website o the Programme MEDSTAT
  http://ec.europa.eu/...