The European Commission adopted the European Statistics Code of Practice on 25 May 2005. The Code is intended for Eurostat, the European Central Bank and national statistical institutes as well as other statistical bodies in charge of producing official statistics. EFTA/EEA countries will also follow the Code as Norway participates to the full in the European statistical cooperation. The Code of Practice will also be incorporated in the EEA Agreement.
The Code of Practice is more concrete and detailed than the UN's Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics. It has been developed in line with the quality systems followed by Eurostat and many other statistical institutes. The Code consists of 15 principles covering the institutional environment, statistical processes and outputs. Some of them are identical to the quality criteria used by Eurostat and Statistics Norway for several years. The relationship between the principles in the Code and a quality model where distinction is made between quality related to institutions, processes and outputs is illustrated in the figure below. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) operate with a somewhat different set of quality dimensions, but the main elements are the same as those covered by the European Statistics Code of Practice. In addition, the UN's principles are more explicit with regard to statistics as an indispensable element in the information system of a democratic society, and the statistical institutes' need to make decisions according to strictly professional considerations, including scientific principles and professional ethics.
Framework for quality and the European Statistics Code of Practice
To the European Statistics Code of
Practice 
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