Following Turkey’s nomination as a Candidate Country at the Helsinki Summit 1999, Eurostat and the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) started without delay to investigate in depth the current situation of the Statistical System of Turkey and identified urgent needs while considering the absorption capacity of TurkStat. Numerous technical assistance programmes and other donor activities have supported TurkStat in gradually adopting the Acquis Communautaire. Over the course of the last two decades, TurkStat, with its 26 regional offices, has overcome the challenge to build a modern and integrated statistical system by promoting infrastructural developments and methodological upgrades of statistics. Still, in the case of certain statistical areas, there remains room for improvements in harmonising statistical production with the EU Acquis.

The overall objective of the project is to support the process of harmonising national statistical production with the EU Acquis.

The purpose of this contract is to improve the compliance level of business statistics, social statistics and macro-economic and environmental statistics, with Acquis Communautaire and to provide adequate data and analysis for the purposes of facilitating policy decisions towards implementation of the pre-accession strategy and the adoption of the Acquis in statistics.

GOPA Luxembourg is part of the consortium led by the Statistics department of GOPA Consultants, and composed of Statistics Netherlands and BYS Grup. Together, they will provide support and tailored advise to TurkStat in order to improve:

• Business statistics
• Social statistics
• Macro-economic and environmental statistics
• Project management and monitoring capabilities