(fra kommisjonsforslaget)

Reasons and objectives for the proposal

Past financial crises have shown that developments in real estate markets can have severe repercussions on the stability of the financial system and the economy as a whole. The European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB), which is tasked with providing macro-prudential oversight of the EU financial system and preventing and mitigating systemic risk, has identified significant gaps in the availability of comparable information on prices, rents and construction starts in the commercial real estate sector. This hampers its ability to provide a sound analysis and identify possible risks across countries. In its Recommendations of 31 October 2016 (ESRB/2016/14) ( 1 ) and of 21 March 2019 (ESRB/2019/3) ( 2 ) on closing real estate data gaps, the ESRB explicitly asked the Commission to propose legislation to fill the data gap on the physical commercial real estate. The Council has also encouraged the development of commercial real estate statistics in its conclusions on statistics in recent years.

While financial statistics covering financial system’s exposure to commercial real estate credits fall under the competence of the European Central Bank and the European System of Central Banks, the non-financial statistics as regards the physical commercial real estate market are under the responsibility of the Commission (Eurostat) and the European Statistical System. Therefore, this proposal focuses on non-financial commercial real estate statistics and would fill a significant gap in the availability of such statistical information needed for macro-prudential purposes. Currently, there are few official sources of non-financial statistics on commercial real estate, and the availability of more statistics would be crucial for policymakers to assess potential risks to financial stability. Most of the information used by policymakers is currently purchased from private organisations.

In recent years, the Commission (Eurostat) and the Member States have jointly investigated the feasibility of developing non-financial commercial real estate statistics. They have made significant progress particularly on prices, rents and construction starts, although considerable practical and methodological challenges remain. The proposal would ensure that these statistics are comparable and consistent across EU Member States. Without this initiative, the statistics could be provided on a voluntary basis, but the coverage in terms of Member States would remain limited if some countries do not send data and the comparability of the statistics across Member States would not be ensured.

Eurostat’s and the Member States’ efforts to develop non-financial statistics on the commercial real estate statistics domain were documented in the Commission staff working Document ’Final progress report on commercial real estate statistics’ (SWD(2023) 434 final) ( 3 ). The progress has not been even across all indicators or across all Member States though, particularly where action is voluntary. In addition, methodological challenges remain as data sources and the size of commercial real estate markets vary from country to country. Due to limited availability of data sources and insufficient quality of statistics, the indicators on rental yield indices and vacancy rates that were recommended by the ESRB are not included in this Regulation. It is necessary to continue to invest in methodological improvements and capacity building for such statistics.