BAKGRUNN (fra kommisjonsforordningen)

(1) In order to function, the internal market requires statistical standards applicable to the collection, transmission and publication of national and European statistics which allow businesses, financial institutions, governments and all other operators in the internal market to have access to reliable and comparable statistical data. To that end, it is vital to have a uniform interpretation in all Member States of the various positions for classifying products in the Union. 

(2) Regulation (EC) No 451/2008 established a common statistical classification of products by activity (‘CPA’), setting out the requirements of statistics at the time of its adoption. Those requirements no longer meet the needs of the technological environment, the structure of the economy, and the relevant international economic and social classifications. 

(3) Since the most recent version of the CPA started to apply on 1 January 2015, globalisation and digitalisation have changed the way in which many economic activities provide goods and services. New goods and services have gained in importance while others have lost importance in the globalised European Union economy. Rapid changes have also taken place in the information-technology environment. In addition, the increased awareness of the impact of the economy on the environment has created specialised activities to protect the environment, which in turn generate new products and services. 

(4) The internal consistency of European statistics requires that the CPA is structurally linked to its European reference classification, the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Union (‘NACE’). 

(5) The international comparability of economic statistics requires that the Member States and the Union institutions use classifications of products that are directly linked to the international Central Product Classification (‘CPC’). 

(6) Following the adoption, by the Commission, of Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/137 establishing NACE Revision 2 Update 1 (‘NACE Rev. 2.1’), as well as the adoption, by the Statistical Commission of the United Nations, of Version 3.0 of the CPC (‘CPC Ver. 3.0’), the CPA should be adapted in order to maintain its international comparability and its consistency with the standards for classifying economic activity used at Union level. 

(7) In order to reflect the reality of current economic activities in the Union, the CPA should consider products resulting from new economic activities made possible with recent structural, scientific and technological developments, as well as from emerging goods and services resulting from existing activities. 

(8) In order to support the Commission’s ongoing efforts to modernise the production of European statistics and for the CPA to contribute, through more comparable and relevant data, to better economic governance at both Union and national level, it is necessary to update the CPA. 

(9) As regards data referred to in Annex B to Regulation (EU) No 549/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council, compliance with the updated classification should not be required immediately, as a certain period of time is necessary to allow data providers to adapt to the new regulatory requirements.

 (10) Regulation (EC) No 451/2008 should therefore be amended accordingly,