The forum of Euro-Mediterranean statisticians is a high level decision-making body whose role is to steer cooperation in statistics between the EU and the National Statistical Systems of the ENP-South countries.

The overall mandate of the Forum of Euro-Mediterranean statisticians is to:

• Steer the Euro-Mediterranean regional cooperation partnership in statistics;
• Support the ENP-South countries in strengthening the capacity of their National Statistical Systems (NSS) to produce, analyse and disseminate harmonized statistics;
• Improve the quality of statistics in the region;
• Promote the use of statistics for evidence-based decision making;
• Identify emerging statistical issues in the region;
• Ensure coordination with regional and international organisations active in the region.

The Forum is co-chaired by Eurostat and National Statistical Institute NSI (Haut Commissariat au Plan) Morocco. The permanent members of the Forum are: the Directors of the NSIs of the 9 ENP-South countries, or their nominated delegate; representatives from the European Commission (Eurostat and DG NEAR).

This 7th forum gathered all the directors of the ENP South National Statistical Office, the Principal National Coordinators (PNC) and Working Group leads (3 to 4 participants per countries). Representatives of NSO Italy, Denmark and Hungary participated as well as partner institution to MEDSTAT IV programme.

The forum discussed the perspectives for the statistical cooperation programme after the end of the current statistical cooperation programme MEDSTAT IV which is ending in April 2019.

Preparatory process for the post MEDSTAT IV has been delayed which may lead to gap between the end of the current programme (April 2019) and the next one (early 2020). In the meantime, some training and meeting resources of Eurostat will be mobilised - big data, quality assessment, forum meeting, quality issues meetings. Some innovative means to work will be considered (e.g. virtual conferences, social media groups, etc). 

Morocco, as chair of the forum presented an overview of the main achievements and value-added of this cooperation programme and strategic priorities proposals for the next one.

There is a clear recognition of the high value added of this statistical cooperation over the last 20 years, progressing from production to use, with very efficient evolution of the governance with the creation of the Forum, ensuring a real participatory process and sustainability of the partnership. In terms of strategic developments for NSis, SDGs is a key one, together with support to local decision makers, use of registers and administrative data, big data, openness of data and new users policy, governance of National Statistical System. In terms of sectors migration/refugees, employment, trade remains key sectors, environment identified as a strategic sector to be further considered. The tour de table of the countries confirmed this overview with a clear focus on quality and value of continuous training and continuous modernisation of the production process.

SDGs are the key strategic priority with global interest including concerns about practical implementation. The forum agreed to consider SDGs as an umbrella/cross-cutting issue rather than the focus of a new Working Group.

More information available from Eurostat here