19.04.2018 Memorandum of Understanding Signed by Statistical Offices of V4 Countries

19 April 2018

Statistical Offices (National Statistical Institutes) of the Visegrad Group (V4) countries adopted the “Memorandum of Understanding on Co-operation between the Statistical Offices of the Visegrád Group Countries” in Budapest today.

The Memorandum of Understanding was signed today by top managers of the National Statistical Institutes: Marek Rojíček on behalf of the Czech Statistical Office (CZSO), Alexander Ballek on behalf of the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic, Grażyna Marciniak on behalf of Statistics Poland, and Gabriella Vukovich on behalf of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office.

“The aim is to intensify co-operation in selected domains. We want to work together on the overall development, modernisation of statistical processes, enhancement of quality of statistics, and improvement of methodologies,” Marek Rojíček, the CZSO President, said during the summit in Budapest. The co-operation will take place, for example, as for the 2021 Population and Housing Census preparation and big data utilisation.

The first result of the declared closer co-operation is a new statistical publication focusing on comparison of the Vysegrad Group countries. The V4 countries lie on the territory with the area of 532.8 thousand km². In the beginning of 2017, the total of 63.8 million inhabitants lived in the countries, i.e. 12.5% of the entire EU population. The Czech Republic is the second most populated country of the V4 Group.

The economies of the V4 countries are based on industry, which in all of the countries makes over a quarter of the gross value added. In the Czech Republic alone it is over 30%.

“V4 countries belong to the fastest growing economies of the EU. Their gross domestic product in total increased by 4.3% in 2017, while in the EU in total it was only by 2.4%. The favourable economic development resulted also in a deep decrease in unemployment. Last year, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland belonged to seven countries of the EU with the lowest unemployment rate,” Karolína Súkupová, an analyst of the CZSO stated.

The economies of the V4 countries are wide open. All of them have Germany as their key export partner. At the same time, all V4 countries have at least one country of the V4 Group among the three most important export destinations.

You can find the new statistical publication also on the CZSO website: https://www.czso.cz/documents/10180/80650655/main_indicators_of_the_visegrad_group_countries.pdf.

Contact:
Petra Báčová
Spokeswoman of the CZSO
T (+420) 274 052 017 | M (+420) 778 727 232
E petra.bacova@czso.cz | Twitter @statistickyurad