due to the fact that many of the expenditure-related activities conducted by a government at a detailed
level fall under several possible headings.
There is accordingly a need to harmonise concepts and definitions in a consistent way across countries.
Moreover, there is also a need to encourage synergies and further consistency with other international
data sets, such as educational, social protection, health, or environmental accounts. Although it only
meets once per year, all these issues are being tackled by the previously mentioned task force. Eurostat
will publish a manual for the compilation of COFOG statistics in 2007.
3.2.1. Some common patterns
Notwithstanding all these drawbacks, and considering that work is still in progress and the data subject to
improvement, some common patterns can be identified in the data transmitted so far, which show their
usefulness for addressing user' needs. More light can be shed on the composition of public expenditures.
Expenditure under the COFOG 2nd level category "old age" (under social protection) appears for most
countries to be the most relevant, ranging from around 15% of total government expenditure in 2005 in
Belgium, Denmark, Slovak Republic, Lithuania, Finland, Hungary, Spain, and Estonia, to over 25% in
Poland, Italy, Bulgaria and Greece. Some other very significant categories reported by most countries are
sickness and disability, executive and legislative organs, and hospital services.
Moreover, the COFOG 2nd level data reported allow for an analysis of the different compositions across
countries, for each of the first level categories. For example, the proportion of expenditure on pre-
primary and primary education is relatively significant in countries like Sweden and Denmark, while
Portugal devotes a very high share of educational expenditure to secondary education. Finland devotes a
significant share to tertiary education, compared to the other countries which reported data.
When longer time series are available, there is also the possibility to analyse changes in the composition
of public expenditure, both within each category through time and also across countries, as we have
shown in the case of Denmark.
3.3. Future developments and way forward
Member States have been asked to step up their efforts to compile and disseminate COFOG second level
data in order to comply with the requests of the Council. Given that the transmission of these data is
voluntary, only a strong commitment by the national authorities to effectively deliver these statistics
would allow the assessment of the degree of achievement of the Lisbon Agenda and the related
Integrated Guidelines.
4. National fiscal rules and institutions
The Commission together with the EPC launched two comprehensive surveys among EU countries to
take stock of the prevailing national fiscal rules and institutions over the period 1990-2005.^13 Overall, the
surveys provided substantial information on sixty national numerical fiscal rules and twenty three
national independent institutions in the field of fiscal policy, and yielded interesting results in terms of
(^13) The survey on rules covered all types of numerical fiscal rules (i.e. budget balance, debt, expenditure and revenue rules).
Therefore, other types of rules such as budgetary legal procedures were not considered. As for the questionnaire on
institutions, its coverage concerned the existing national institutions, others than the government, the Central Banks and
the Parliament, which may have a direct or indirect influence on the conduct of fiscal policy and are primarily financed
by public funds (i.e. private think-tanks or banks' research departments were not covered). These independent
institutions generally provide inputs for budget preparation (e.g. forecasts), analyses on fiscal developments and/or
recommendations on fiscal policy issues.