The Official Journal of the European Union published on 9 December 2010, Regulation Nº 1151/2010 establishing some of the technical requirements for the implementation of the rules on population and housing censuses, as regards the modalities and structure of the quality reports and the technical format for data transmission. These rules aim at ensuring the correct and accurate transmission of data as well as interoperability of the technical formats between Member states.

Commission Regulation (EU) Nº 1151/2010 of 8 December 2010 regarding rules on population and housing censuses, lays down the modalities and structure of the quality reports to be submitted by Member States on the quality of the data they transmit to the Commission through the European Statistical Office, Eurostat, from their population and housing censuses for the reference year 2011. This Regulation also establishes the technical format for data transmission in order to fulfil the requirements of Regulation (EC) Nº 763/2008.

These legal provisions establish that the technical format to be used for the transmission of data and metadata for the reference year 2011 will be the Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX) format. Member States will transmit the required data conforming to the data structure definitions and related technical specifications provided by the Commission through Eurostat.

Member States will be required to store until 1 January 2025 the required data and metadata for any later transmission requested by the Commission.

The Regulation establishes that at the request of the European Statistical Office, Eurostat, i.e. the Commission, Member States will provide it with access to any information relevant to the assessment of the quality of the transmitted data and metadata as required by Regulation (EU) Nº 519/2010, excluding the transmission to and storage at the Commission of any microdata and confidential data.

The rule also lays down that Member States will have to report to the Commission by 31 March 2014, the background information specified in Annex I, which includes information related to data resources, census lifecycle or the processing and evaluation of such data. By that date Member states will also inform about the quality-related data and metadata specified in Annexes II and III, in terms of accessibility, coherence, comparability and others, as well as the cross-tabulations for the quality assessment; with reference to their population and housing censuses for the reference year 2011 and to the data and metadata transmitted to the Commission as required by Regulation (EU) Nº 519/2010.

These rules will enter into force by 1 January 2011.