
Article 1 

1. The transmitted indices and metadata shall be sent in electronic form by the Member States to the Commission (Eurostat). Transmission shall conform to appropriate interchange standards approved by the Statistical Programme Committee. Eurostat shall make available detailed documentation in relation to approved standards and shall supply guidelines on how to implement these standards.
2. The transmitted indices and metadata shall be prepared in such a way as to allow a thorough interpretation of the results and the efficient application of the Commission's (Eurostat) seasonal adjustment procedures for the European aggregates.The index series shall be delivered in the following forms:
(a) unadjusted;
(b) working-day adjusted;
(c) seasonally and working-day adjusted.
Article 2 

1. The quality criteria referred to in Article 8(1) of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 shall comprise the following:
(a) relevance;
(b) accuracy;
(c) timeliness and punctuality;
(d) accessibility and clarity;
(e) comparability;
(f) coherence;
(g) completeness.The national authorities shall ensure that the results reflect the true situation regarding the economic activities with a sufficient degree of representativity.
2. The quality reports provided for by Article 8(2) of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 shall be transmitted to the Commission by 31 August each year at the latest and shall relate to data ending in the fourth quarter of the previous calendar year. The first quality report shall be transmitted by 31 August 2004 at the latest.
3. The content of the annual quality reports for the labour cost index shall be as set out in Annex I to this Regulation.
Article 3 
Details relating to the transition periods provided for in Article 9(1) of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 are set out in Annex II to this Regulation.
Article 4 

1. As regards Member States other than those referred to in paragraph 2, labour cost index data for NACE Rev. 2sections O to S shall be produced and transmitted for the first quarter of 2007 and thereafter for each quarter.
2. As regards the following Member States, the data shall be produced and transmitted for the first quarter of 2009 and thereafter for each quarter: Belgium, Denmark, Greece, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Malta, Austria, Poland and Sweden.
3. By way of exception to paragraphs 1 and 2, seasonally and working-day adjusted series as referred to in Article 1(2)(c) shall be produced and transmitted as soon as series covering four years of data are available.
Article 5 
The Laspeyres chain index formula to be used for calculating the labour cost index for combinations of NACE Rev. 2 sections referred to in the Annex to Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 is set out in Annex IV to this Regulation.
Article 6 
Derogations from the provisions of Article 1(2) accepted pursuant to Article 9(2) of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 are set out in Annex V to this Regulation.
Article 7 
This Regulation shall enter into force on the 20th day following that of its publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.
This Regulation shall be binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.
ANNEX I

The annual reports on quality for the labour cost index include the following items:

((a)) evidence of relevance to user needs:

— a summary including description of the users, origin and satisfaction of users' needs, and relevance of statistics for the users;
((b)) evidence of accuracy (information broken down by NACE Rev. 2 sections):

— revision history: a table showing the revisions in the published year-on-year growth rates for total labour costs using the unadjusted series, for the last 12 quarters; a summary of the reasons for the revisions,
— coverage: a table showing the percentage of the employees represented in the sample(s)/register(s) based on the number of employees according to ESA 95; if labour cost items are collected from different sources, a table broken down by labour cost items according to Article 4(2) of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003,
— frequency: a table showing the frequency of collecting/updating the different cost item information,
— estimation: a description of the methods used to estimate/model the missing information (missing groups of employees, enterprises, economic activities and cost items); an evaluation, as quantitative as possible, of the impact on the final figures of completely missing information (missing groups of employees, enterprises, economic activities and cost items),
— hours worked: a description of the methods for compiling the hours worked; or a description of the proxy measure of the hours worked and an evaluation, as quantitative as possible of the impact of the proxy measure on the final figures,
— administrative data: where administrative data are used, comments on the correspondence and differences between the administrative concepts and the theoretical statistical concepts;
((c)) timeliness and punctuality:

— a table showing the delays in days in transmitting the data for the last 12 quarters covered by the report and the correspondence between planned and actual date of transmission;
((d)) accessibility and clarity:

— a description of the publication media for the data and metadata in Member States;
((e)) comparability:

— a description of any differences in concepts and methods in any pair of consecutive quarters from the first quarter of 1996 onwards. In addition, a description of the differences and an assessment, as quantitative as possible, of the effect of the change in the estimates. Any differences in comparability between the NACE Rev. 2 sections should also be identified;
((f)) coherence:

— a graph and a table showing annual unadjusted growth rates of the total labour cost index (NACE Rev. 2 sections) and of the ESA 95 compensation of employees per hours worked (A6 breakdown) with explanations for the differences in the growth rates for the last 12 quarters;
((g)) completeness:

— a progress report of the implementation of Regulation (EC) No 450/2003 together with a detailed plan and timetable for completing the implementation; a summary of the remaining deviations from EU concepts.
The first quality report due by 31 August 2004 includes also the following items for the back data:

— a description of the sources used for the back data and the methodology employed,
— a description of the correspondence between the coverage (economic activities, employees, cost items) of the back data and that of the current data,
— a description of the comparability of the back data and the current data.

ANNEX II
Member State Provision concerns Article Transition period
Belgium 70 day transmission delay 6 2 years
Labour costs per hour worked 2 2 years
Germany NACE sections H, I and K 3 2 years
Greece All provisions  2 years
Spain 70 day transmission delay 6 2 years
France All provisions  2 years
Ireland All provisions  2 years
Italy Labour costs per hour worked 2 1 year
Back data based on hours worked 2, 5 1 year
70 day transmission delay 6 1 year
Employers' social contributions plus taxes paid by the employer less subsidies received
— without treatment of taxes and subsidies (D4 and D5)
 4 2 years
Luxembourg All provisions  2 years
Netherlands Back data 1996-2002 5 2 years
Employers' social contributions plus taxes paid by the employer less subsidies received
— without treatment of taxes and subsidies (D4 and D5)
 4 2 years
Austria NACE sections C, D, E and F 3 1 year
NACE sections G, H, I, J and K 3 2 years
Portugal 70 day transmission delay 6 1 year
Finland All provisions  2 years
Sweden All provisions  2 years
United Kingdom Representation of Northern Ireland 3 2 years
Representation of units with less than 20 employees 3 2 years
Back data 5 1 year
Working-day adjustment 11 2 years
ANNEX III
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ANNEX IV

The Laspeyres chain index formula to be used for the calculation of the labour cost index (LCI) for combinations of NACE Rev. 2 sections:

1.. Define:
wtjilabour costs per hour worked of employees in NACE Rev. 2 section i in quarter t in year jωkilabour costs per hour worked of employees in NACE Rev. 2 section i in year khkihours worked by employees in NACE Rev. 2 section i in year kWkiωki * hki = labour costs of employees in NACE Rev. 2 section i in year k.
2.. The basic Laspeyres formula to be used to calculate the LCI for quarter t in year j, with base year k is defined as:
LCItjk = iwtjihkiiωkihki = iwtji / ωkiωkihkiiWki = iwtji / ωkiWkiiWki
where 1 ≤ t ≤ 4.
3.. The weights used to calculate the index are defined as:
WkiiWki
where
Wki, i and k are defined in paragraph 1 of this Annex.
4.. The annual link for year l to year l + 1, where 0 ≤ l < l + 1 < j is defined by:
Ll,l+1 = iωl+1ihlii ωlihli
5.. The Laspeyres chain index formula for quarter t in year j with reference year k = 0 and m the interval required to process and apply the necessary annual weights, where 1 ≤ m ≤ 2, is defined as:

 LCItj(0) = 100. (L0,1). (L1,2) ….. (Lj-m-1,j-m ). LCItj(j-m).
6.. The first index reference year shall be the year 2000, when the annual labour cost index equals 100. If indices for NACE sections O to S are not available for the year 2000, the first available indices shall be set at a level close to the annual average of NACE sections B to N.

ANNEX V

Denmark, Germany, France and Sweden: the index series shall be delivered only (b) working-day adjusted and (c) seasonally and working-day adjusted. The working-day and seasonal adjustment methods shall be fully documented and made available for the Commission (Eurostat).
