Report of the Working Group on Fishery Statistics Liaison (WGSTAL)

Eurostat and ICES both noted that the cooperation has worked smoothly and that no particular problem has been encountered since the last meeting in May 2008.

Eurostat noted that the discussion on the scope of the Eurostat‐ICES database has been concluded with a decision at the Director’s level. As advocated by ICES this database will as hitherto include all landing data from catches in the Northeast Atlan‐tic (FAO 27); this means adding Russia, Greenland and Faroe Islands to the EFTA group of countries.

ICES will promote the use of SDMX format for transmitting data as implemented in the Eurostat system. The Parties noted that the next version of FishStatPlus‐that is used for presenting data on the ICES website‐is expected to accept imports in this format.

ICES welcomed Eurostat’s initiatives on establishing a web‐based reporting system and that this system will include a data validation module. ICES will promote this data reporting system to countries that are not reporting to Eurostat on a legal basis, i.e. Faroe Islands, Greenland and Russia. When the system is functional, Eurostat and ICES will consider how data from these countries are best loaded onto the database.

On the validation module the Parties agreed that a joint workshop might be useful in the coming year. However, the Eurostat system needs further development before such a workshop is useful and therefore it is not appropriate to decide on a particular date and agenda at this point in time. Eurostat will take the initiative on the Work‐shop. It might be useful that FAO/FIES takes part in this Workshop