30.3.93 Official Journal of the European Communities No L 76/1 (Acts whose publication is obligatory) COUNCIL REGULATION (EEC) No 696/93 - of 15 March 1993 on the statistical units for the observation and analysis of the production system in the Community THE COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES, Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community, and in particular Article 100a thereof, Having regard to the proposal from the Commission (%), In cooperation with the European Parliament (), Having regard to the opinion of the Economic and Social Committee (3), Whereas the functioning of the internal market requires statistical standards applicable to the identification of units and the collection, transmission and publication of national and Community statistics in order to make reliable and comparable information available to enterprises, financial institutions, governments and all other operators in the internal market; Whereas statistical information on the production system will be necessary to enterprises for assessing their competitiveness and be useful to the Community institutions in the prevention of distortion of competition; ' Whereas in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity the creation of common statistical norms that permit the production of harmonized data is an action which can only be undertaken efficiently at Community level and whereas those norms will be applied in each Member State under the authority of the bodies and institutions in charge of compiling official statistics; (') OJ No C 267, 16.10. 1992, p. 3. (3) O] No C 337, 21.12.1992; and Decision of 10 February 1993 (not yet published in the Official Journal). (})) O] No C 19, 25.1.1993, p. 60. Whereas only if the Member States use common definitions of statistical units will it be possible to provide integrated statistical information with the reliability, speed, flexibility and degree of detail required for the management of the internal market; Whereas provision should be made for the Member States to be able, in order to meet specific requirements, to retain or introduce other statistical units in their national nomenclatures for the observation and analysis of the production system; Whereas the choice of statistical units to be used in particular enquiries or analyses will be determined in specific texts; Whereas utilization of the statistical classification of economic activities in the European Communities hereafter referred to as NACE Rev. 1 provided for in Regulation (EEC) No 3037/90 (*) and application of the European - System of Integrated Economic Accounts (ESA) require standard definitions of statistical units for registers, surveys and the presentation and analysis of statistics; Whereas the Committee set up by Regulation (EEC) No 3037/90 is competent for the ‘elaboration of guidelines for " classifying statistical units in accordance with NACE Rev 1’ but the units must be defined elsewhere; Whereas it is vital that the statistical units classified according to the NACE Rev. 1 be defined in the same way in all Member States in order to ensure comparability between the corresponding national and Community statistics; Whereas it is desirable to limit the number of statistical units used for the production system; (4) OJ No L 293, 24. 10. 1990, p. 1.