Protection, use and sharing of confidential statistical information collected by the ESCB

1. The rules set out this Article shall apply to prevent the unlawful use and disclosure of confidential statistical information that is provided by the reporting agent or other legal or natural person, entity or branch to an ESCB member or shared within the ESCB.

2. ESCB members shall use and share with each other confidential statistical information for the performance of the tasks of the ESCB, including for the development, production or dissemination of statistics or for increasing their quality.

3. In addition to the obligation laid down in paragraph 2, the ESCB members:

may use confidential statistical information for the performance of their tasks relating to prudential supervision;

shall share confidential statistical information with other legitimate parties for the performance of their respective tasks relating to supervision or the stability and effectiveness of the financial system; including market integrity and investor protection.

may share confidential statistical information with the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and with authorities or bodies of the Union or of the Member States which are not other legitimate parties, as follows:

with the ESM and with authorities or bodies responsible for the supervision of financial institutions, markets and infrastructures or for the stability of the financial system in accordance with Union or national law, to the extent and at the level of detail necessary to perform their respective statutory tasks;

with authorities or bodies with a legal right or entitlement to collect such confidential statistical information to perform their respective statutory tasks, to the extent and at the level of detail necessary to avoid that such information is collected twice from the same reporting agent;

shall share confidential statistical information with ESS authorities in accordance with Article 8a(1) and (2);

may grant access to researchers affiliated with scientific research bodies to confidential statistical information which does not allow a reporting agent, or other legal or natural person, entity or branch to be directly identified;

where they are national central banks, may use and share confidential statistical information for the performance of national central banks’ functions other than those specified in the Statute, in accordance with Article 14.4 of the Statute;

may use or share confidential statistical information for other purposes, if the reporting agent or other legal or natural person, entity or branch which can be identified has explicitly given its consent for such use or sharing.

4. In the circumstances set out in paragraph 3, points (a) to (f), confidential statistical information shall not be used or shared for commercial or tax purposes or for the purpose of legal proceedings, with the exception of:

proceedings concerning the failure to fulfil an obligation arising from ECB regulations or decisions, including those laying down and imposing statistical reporting requirements; or

where confidential statistical information collected by a national central bank is used or shared for such purposes in order to perform functions other than those specified in the Statute, in accordance with Article 14.4 of the Statute.

5. The ECB may decide to collect confidential information originally collected for purposes other than those of Article 5 of the Statute, to the extent and at the level of detail necessary for the efficient development or production of statistics or for increasing their quality, and where those statistics are necessary to perform the tasks of the ESCB laid down in the Treaty. Once integrated with statistical information, that confidential information shall be subject to the same rules that apply to confidential statistical information.

6. The ESCB members may share confidential statistical information with a reporting agent in the following circumstances:

where the confidential statistical information is exclusively core reference data and those core reference data are used by the reporting agent to identify and classify:

the reporting agent;

the reporting agent’s affiliated legal persons, entities or branches; or

the counterparties to transactions with the reporting agent;

where the confidential statistical information is taken from sources which are available to the reporting agent, provided that the sharing of that information is necessary for the efficient development, production or dissemination of statistics or for increasing their quality, or for the performance of the tasks of the ESCB or tasks concerning policies relating to the prudential supervision of credit institutions.

The core reference data referred to in point (a) may be shared with a reporting agent provided that the sharing of that data is necessary for the efficient development, production or dissemination of European statistics or for increasing their quality.

7. ESCB members shall take all the necessary regulatory, administrative, technical and organisational measures to ensure the physical and logical protection of confidential statistical information. The ECB shall lay down common rules and implement minimum standards to prevent unlawful disclosure and unauthorised use of confidential statistical information. Member States and the ECB shall adopt all necessary measures to ensure the protection of confidential statistical information, including the imposition of the appropriate enforcement measures in the event of an infringement.

8. Any party receiving confidential statistical information:

shall take all the necessary regulatory, administrative, technical and organisational measures to ensure the physical and logical protection of confidential statistical information in accordance with the common rules and minimum standards laid down by the ECB; and

may further transmit the confidential statistical information provided that that is necessary to carry out its statutory tasks and with the explicit authorisation of the ESCB member that shared the information; such authorisation shall not be required for the further transmission from the ESM members to national parliaments to the extent required under national law, provided that the ESM member has consulted the relevant ESCB member before the transmission and the Member State of the national parliament receiving the confidential statistical information from the ESM member has taken the measures specified in point (a).

9. Reporting agents shall be informed of the uses to which statistical information provided by them may be put. To that end, the ESCB members shall publish information on the use of statistical information for statistical purposes, or for the purpose of performing the tasks of the ESCB or tasks concerning policies relating to the prudential supervision of credit institutions, and information on any other circumstances in which confidential statistical information is used or shared in accordance with paragraph 3. Reporting agents shall have the right to request information concerning the legal basis for the sharing of the information and the protective measures adopted.

10. Statistical information lawfully available to the public and which remains available to the public pursuant to Union or national law shall not be considered confidential. Such information shall include in particular data on key attributes of individual companies as listed in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/138 ( *10 ) .

11. This Article shall apply without prejudice to specific provisions of Union or national law relating to the transmission or sharing of information other than confidential statistical information to or with the ECB.

12. This Article shall not apply to confidential statistical information initially transmitted between an ESS authority and an ESCB member.

13. This Article shall not prevent confidential statistical information collected by an ESCB member for purposes other than, or in addition to, meeting the ECB’s statistical reporting requirements from being used to meet those other purposes.

14. This Article shall not prevent ESCB members from granting access to confidential statistical information to service providers for the sole purpose of providing contracted services that support the performance of the tasks for which such information may be used and shared pursuant to this Regulation.

( *10 ) Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2023/138 of 21 December 2022 laying down a list of specific high-value datasets and the arrangements for their publication and re-use ( OJ L 19, 20.1.2023, p. 43 , ELI: http://data.europa.eu/eli/reg_impl/2023/138/oj ).’;"

Article 8a is amended as follows:

paragraph 1 is replaced by the following:

‘1. The transmission of confidential statistical information from an ESCB member to an ESS authority shall be allowed provided that such transmission is necessary for the efficient development, production or dissemination, or for increasing the quality, of European statistics within the respective competence of the ESCB and the ESS and that such need has been justified.’

paragraph 4 is replaced by the following:

‘4. Statistical information which the ESCB members receive from ESS authorities and which was obtained from data lawfully available to the public and which remains available to the public in accordance with Union or national law shall not be considered confidential for the purposes of disseminating statistics obtained from that statistical information.’

Article 8c is replaced by the following:

COUNCIL REGULATION (EU) 2026/415 of 16 December 2025 amending Regulation (EC) No 2533/98 concerning the collection of statistical information by the European Central Bank