Commission Regulation (EC) No 13/2005 of 6 January 2005 implementing Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning Community statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) as regards the list of target secondary variables relating to ‘social participation’Text with EEA relevance

of 6 January 2005

implementing Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning Community statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) as regards the list of target secondary variables relating to ‘social participation’

(Text with EEA relevance)

Preamble

THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES,

Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community,

Having regard to Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 of the European Parliament and the Council of 16 June 2003 concerning Community statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) ¹ , and in particular Article 15(2)(f) thereof,

Whereas:

(1) Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003 established a common framework for the systematic production of Community statistics on income and living conditions, encompassing comparable and timely cross-sectional and longitudinal data on income and on the level and composition of poverty and social exclusion at national and European Union levels.

(2) Under Article 15(2)(f) of Regulation (EC) No 1177/2003, implementing measures are necessary for the list of target secondary areas and variables to be included every year in the cross-sectional component of EU-SILC. For 2006, the list of target secondary variables included in the module ‘Social participation’, (which relates particularly to participation in cultural events, integration with relatives, friends and neighbours, and participation in formal and informal activities) should be set out, together with variable codes and definitions.

(3) The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the Statistical Programme Committee,

HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION:

Article 1

The list of target secondary variables, the variable codes, and the definitions for the 2006 Module for ‘social participation’ to be included in the cross-sectional component of Community statistics on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) shall be as laid down in the Annex.

Article 2

This Regulation shall enter into force on the 20th day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union .

Final provisions

This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States. Done at Brussels, 6 January 2005. For the Commission Joaquín ALMUNIA Member of the Commission

¹ OJ L 165, 3.7.2003, p. 1 .

For the purposes of this Regulation, the following unit, mode of data collection, reference periods and definitions shall apply.

1. UNIT

Information shall be provided for all current household members, or if applicable for all selected respondents, aged 16 years old and over.

2. MODE OF DATA COLLECTION

Owing to the characteristics of the information to be collected, only personal interviews (proxy interviews as an exception for persons temporarily away or incapacitated) or information extracted from registers are allowed.

3. REFERENCE PERIOD

— Last 12 months shall be used for variables related to participation in cultural events, and participation in formal and informal activities.

— Usual shall be used for variables related to integration with relatives and friends. Usual refers to the usual frequency with which the activities take place during a normal year.

— Current for the variable ‘Ability to ask any relative, friend or neighbour for help’.

4. DEFINITIONS

(a) Relatives: shall be understood in the widest sense, and shall include father/mother/children, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews, nieces and families-in-law.

(b) Friends: people the respondent gets together with in his/her spare time (i.e. after working hours, at weekends, or for holidays) and with whom the respondent shares private matters.

(c) To get together means spending time with friends or relatives at home or elsewhere. It can be talking or doing some kind of activities together. Merely encountering someone by chance is not considered as ‘being together’.

(d) Frequency of getting together/being in contact with friends and relatives: refers to the frequency with which the respondent gets together/is in contact with any relative/ friend. Not only the person that the respondent gets together/is in contact with most often, is to be considered. If the respondent meets his/her friends/relatives ‘once a year’ during holidays or feasts, the answer shall be ‘at least once a year’.

(e) Informal voluntary activities: refers to activities that take place outside an organisational context and tend to be done on an individual basis. Informal voluntary activities include cooking for others; taking care of people in hospitals/at home; taking people for a walk; shopping, etc. It excludes any activity that a respondent undertakes for his/her household, in his/her work or within voluntary organisations.

(f) Participation in cultural events: refers to going to the cinema, live performances, visiting cultural sites or attending live sports events, wherever these events take place and whether these activities are performed by professionals or amateurs. For live sports events and live performances, participation refers only to spectating.

AREAS AND LIST OF TARGET VARIABLES

Footnotes

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