L 29/4 Official Journal of the European Communities 4.2.2000 COMMISSION REGULATION (EC) No 264/2000 of 3 February 2000 on the implementation of Council Regulation (EC) No 2223/96 with respect to short-term public finance statistics THE COMMISSION OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES, (8)  The Committee on Monetary, Financial and Balance of Having regard to the Treaty establishing the European Community, Having regard to Council Regulation (EC) No 222396 of 25 June 1996 on the European system of national and regional accounts in the Community ('), as amended by Regulation (EC) No 448/98 (), and in particular Article 3(2) thereof, Whereas: (1)  Pursuant to Article 104/(2) of the Treaty, the Commis- sion is to monitor the development of the budgetary situation. (2)  Council Regulation (EC) No 1466/97 of 7 July 1997 on the strengthening of the surveillance of budgetary posi- tions and the surveillance and coordination of economic policies (}) considered appropriate to complement the multilaterial surveillance procedure of Article 99(3) and (4) of the Treaty with an early warning system, under which the Council will alert a Member State at an early stage to the need to take the necessary budgetary corrective action in order to prevent a government deficit becoming excessive. (3)  The report of the Ecofin Council on statistical require- ments in economic and monetary union, approved on 18 January 1999, outlined in particular the need for common and harmonised short-term public finance stat- istics for Member States, in particular those who belong to economic and monetary union. (4)  National accounts rules, especially European System of accounts 1995 (ESA 95) concepts, are regarded as instruments to ensure comparability and transparency of data between Member States. (5) A step-by-step approach towards the compilation of a full set of quarterly accounts for the general government sector in the framework of ESA 95 should be followed, starting from 2000 with a first set of components of the general government accounts being available according to ESA 95 concepts. (6)  Priority should be given to components representing reliable predictors of trend in public finance and regu- larly available on time. (7) Taxes, actual social contributions and social benefits, as the first set of components, will provide early warning signals of possible risks to budgets and useful informa- tion on cyclical developments in the economy. OJ L 310, 30.11.1996, p. 1. ’) O] L 58, 27.2.1998, p. 1. OJ L 209, 2.8.1997, p. 1. Payments Statistics (CMFB), set up by Council Decision 91/115/EEC (%), as amended by Decision 96/174/EC (%), has been consulted. (9 The measures provided in this Regulation are in accord- ance with the opinion of the Statistical Programme Committee (SPC), set up by Decision 89/382/EEC, Euratom (%), HAS ADOPTED THIS REGULATION: Article 1 Purpose The aim of this Regulation is to define the list and the main characteristics of the ESA 95 categories of transactions to be transmitted quarterly by all Member States from the year 2000, in order to make available a set of common and harmonised short-term statistics on public finance. Article 2 Categories concerned by the transmission of quarterly data Member States shall transmit to the Commission (Eurostat) quarterly data for the following categories of general govern- ment resources and uses, as codified in ESA 95: on the resource side: — taxes on production and imports (D.2) — of which: value-added type taxes (D.211) — current taxes on income, wealth, etc. (D.5) — capital taxes (D.91) — actual social contributions (D.611), on the use side: — social benefits other than social transfers in kind (D.62). Article 3 Sources and methods to compile quarterly data The compilation of quarterly data for the categories referred to in Article 2 shall respect the following rules: 1. quarterly data shall be based on direct information available from basic sources, such as for example public accounts or administrative sources, representing, for each category, at last 90 % of the amount of the category; % OJ L 59, 6.3.1991, p. 19. () O] L 51, 1.3.1996, p. 48. (9 O] L 181, 28.6.1989, p. 47.