
Article 1 

1. The NCBs shall use the table in part B of the Annex to Regulation (EU) No 1097/2010 when transmitting the characteristics concerning multinational enterprise groups and their constituent units to the national statistical institute and other national authorities which participate in the ESS in their Member State (hereinafter the ‘ESS member’), subject to the confidentiality regime set out in Regulation (EC) No 2533/98.
2. The NCBs shall be subject to Article 3 of this Decision, when transmitting these characteristics to the ESS member of their Member State for assessment, correction, completion and integration with the data that the ESS member transmits to the Commission (Eurostat) pursuant to Article 11 of Regulation (EC) No 177/2008.
Article 2 

1. The format set out in the Annex shall be used when data is transmitted from the NCBs to the ESS members.
2. When data is transmitted from the NCBs to the ESS members, the data and metadata shall be transmitted in accordance with the standards of the ESS and with the structure defined in the most recent version of the Eurostat Business Registers Recommendations Manual available from the Commission (Eurostat).
3. When data is transmitted from the NCBs to the ESS members, the NCBs shall follow the same naming conventions, structures and definitions of fields as referred to in Regulation (EC) No 192/2009.
4. The data and metadata transmitted pursuant to this Decision shall be exchanged in electronic form.
5. The data and metadata transmitted pursuant to this Decision shall be transmitted via the secure medium used for the transmission of confidential data, or via secured remote access.
Article 3 

1. The ECB and NCBs shall store the data they receive from the Commission (Eurostat) pursuant to Regulation (EC) No 177/2008 and Regulation (EU) No 1097/2010, and which have been flagged as confidential, in a secure area with restricted and controlled access.
2. Data received by the ECB and NCBs from the Commission (Eurostat) shall be used exclusively for statistical purposes.
3. The ECB and NCBs shall ensure that information on the security measures taken is included in the annual confidentiality report or that the Commission (Eurostat) and the appropriate national authorities are informed by other means.
Article 4 
This Decision shall enter into force on 1 January 2011.
Done at Frankfurt am Main, 27 December 2010.
The President of the ECB
Jean-Claude TRICHET
ANNEX

The following data sets containing confidential information are included in the data quality management process of the Union register of multinational enterprise groups and their constituent units (hereinafter the ‘EuroGroups register’):

— data set with results of the linkage process,
— data sets with information on legal units,
— data sets with information on control and ownership of units,
— data sets with information on enterprises,
— data sets with information on global enterprise groups,
— data sets with information on truncated enterprise groups.
A data set with the results on the truncated and global enterprise groups is generated at the end of each EuroGroups register data quality management cycle.
The format for the data sets is laid down in the Part A of the Annex to Regulation (EC) No 192/2009.
To improve the quality of multinational enterprise group information in the Union, the NCBs forward the data sets with corrected and completed information including confidentiality flags to the ESS member of their Member State. Pursuant to Part A of the Annex to Regulation (EU) No 1097/2010 the appropriate national authority assesses the corrections, completions and confidentiality flags received from the NCBs and, where necessary, integrates them in the data they transmit to the Commission (Eurostat) pursuant to Article 11 of Regulation (EC) No 177/2008.
