Introductory text

THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES,

Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community,

Having regard to Commission Regulation (EC) No 1450/2004 of 13 August 2004 implementing Decision No 1608/2003/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the production and development of Community statistics on innovation^f1, and in particular Section 8 of the Annex thereof,

Whereas:

Commission Regulation (EC) No 1450/2004 of 13 August 2004 implementing Decision No 1608/2003/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council concerning the production and development of Community statistics on innovation contains the reference framework of common standards, definitions and classifications for compiling Community statistics on innovation in order to obtain high quality statistical results from Member states in accordance with these standards, definitions and classifications.

Section 8 of the Annex to Commission Regulation (EC) No 1450/2004 provides that, in so far as national statistical systems require major adaptations, the Commission may grant derogations to Member States with respect to the statistics compiled for the reference year 2004. Additional derogations may be granted with respect to the coverage of economic activities in accordance to NACE Rev. 1.1 or to the size class breakdowns of the statistics to be compiled for the reference year 2006.

Such derogations have been requested by the respective authorities of Greece, France, Malta, Italy and Austria.

According to the information received by the Commission (Eurostat), the requests from the Member States concerned are due to the fact that they need to make important changes to their statistical systems.

The requested derogations should therefore be granted,

HAS ADOPTED THIS DECISION: