Commission Regulation (EC) No 102/2007 of 2 February 2007 adopting the specifications of the 2008 ad hoc module on the labour market situation of migrants and their immediate descendants, as provided for by Council Regulation (EC) No 577/98 and amending Regulation (EC) No 430/2005 (Text with EEA relevance)

THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES,

Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community,

Having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 577/98 of 9 March 1998 on the organisation of a labour force sample survey in the Community^f1, and in particular Article 4(2) thereof,

Whereas:

At its meeting in Thessaloniki in June 2003, the European Council considered that a successful integration of migrants contributes to social cohesion and economic welfare and to addressing the demographic and economic challenges that the European Union is now facing, and called for further progress in this respect. Furthermore, it explicitly called for an accurate and objective analysis of these issues to help develop and promote policy initiatives for more effective management of migration in Europe. The need for effective integration policies was stressed once again in the ‘Hague Programme’ adopted by the European Council in Brussels in November 2004.

As highlighted in the Commission's first Annual Report on Migration and Integration^f2 lack of access to employment has been identified as the greatest barrier to integration and, therefore, the most important political priority within national integration policies.

Consequently, a comprehensive and comparable set of data on the labour market situation of migrants and their immediate descendants is needed in order to monitor progress towards the common objectives of the European Employment Strategy and of the Social Inclusion Process.

The Commission proposal for a Decision of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a Community Programme for Employment and Social Solidarity — Progress^f3 — provides in Section 1, Employment, the financing of the relevant actions including statistical actions. The present Regulation should implement those actions.

Commission Regulation (EC) No 384/2005 of 7 March 2005 adopting the programme of ad hoc modules, covering the years 2007 to 2009, for the labour force sample survey provided by Council Regulation (EC) No 577/98^f4 already included an ad hoc module on the labour market situation of migrants and their immediate descendants. The list of variables for this module should be defined before December 2006.

Regulation (EC) No 384/2005 also provides that implementation of the 2008 module will be conditional upon the results of feasibility studies to be finished before the end of 2005. Eurostat presented the results of these feasibility studies in the meeting of Directors of Social Statistics of Member States in September 2005. It has been concluded that Member States and Eurostat should proceed in the preparation of the module 2008.

For reasons of reliability and quality of the data to be provided, some variables described in the Annex to this Regulation should be optional for Member States with a small sample size for migrants.

There is a need to amend columns 19/20 of Annex II to Commission Regulation (EC) No 430/2005 of 15 March 2005 implementing Council Regulation (EC) No 577/98 on the organisation of a labour force sample survey in the Community concerning the codification to be used for data transmission from 2006 onwards and the use of a sub-sample for the collection of data on structural variables^f5 in order to increase the relevance of the analysis of the labour market situation of migrants by obtaining information on the year of arrival in the host country and on age at the time of arrival, which remain two key explanatory variables for analysing the process of integration into the labour market.

The measures provided for in this Regulation are in accordance with the opinion of the Statistical Programme Committee,

HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION: