The development of the European statistical system for services[Le développement du système statistique européen pour les services]

At European level, statistics on services have been transformed during the last thirty years. Policy requirements deriving from the Single Market Programme and Uruguay Round for services have driven these developments. Statistics now cover production, cross-border trade and the sales of foreign affiliates. Remaining issues concern timeliness, level of disaggregation and incoherence between the different types of data. More recently, the requirements of new policy areas such as the digital economy have been dealt with by undertaking complementary surveys rather than reworking the statistical system. For longer term issues of growth, employment, productivity and innovation, national income accounts provide an increasingly inadequate framework. Service dominant logic combined with the growing literature on intangible investments could be a promising avenue to explore.