The European Central Bank has published its biennial quality report on euro area and national balance of payments, international investment position and international reserves statistics, covering quarterly data through the second quarter of 2025 and monthly data through June 2025. It finds that most national central banks broadly met timeliness and coverage requirements and that balance of payments and international investment position data are generally coherent with related datasets, but it identifies remaining weaknesses in methodological soundness, monthly data quality, internal consistency and intra-euro area asymmetries across several countries. The report also feeds the quality assurance process for statistics used in the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure. The main recurring issues are special purpose entity coverage and geographical detail in Cyprus and Malta, functional classification of direct investment instruments and trade credits, financial derivatives coverage, and reconciliation of positions and flows. The report recommends that Germany improve geographical allocation and stop using non-allocated rest-of-the-world entries, while Luxembourg still records trade credits between direct investment counterparties under other investment. It also highlights revision-prone monthly data in Ireland, Cyprus and the Netherlands, elevated net errors and omissions in Finland at around 8 percent of average current account gross flows, Lithuania at about 6 percent and Germany at just above 5 percent, and persistent discrepancies with sector accounts and other statistical domains in several countries. Improvements since the 2023 review include stronger special purpose entity coverage in Malta and Luxembourg, corrected trade credit classification in Spain and Greece, and new French estimates for euro banknotes held abroad. Alongside the quality findings, the report notes that the ESCB Statistics Committee has endorsed a medium-term strategy to implement revised national accounts and IMF Balance of Payments Manual BPM7 standards in Europe by the end of the decade. The current assessment continues to use BPM6 data and forms part of the ECB Executive Board's reporting to the Governing Council.
European Central Bank2026-05-22
European Central Bank publishes quality review of balance of payments and international investment position data and flags persistent methodological and consistency gaps
The European Central Bank’s biennial quality report on euro area and national balance of payments, international investment position and reserves statistics finds broad compliance with timeliness and coverage, but persistent weaknesses in methodological soundness, monthly data quality, internal consistency and intra-euro area asymmetries. Recurring issues include special purpose entity coverage, geographical allocation, functional classification of direct investment and trade credits, financial derivatives coverage, reconciliation of positions and flows, high net errors and omissions, and discrepancies with sector accounts, despite targeted improvements since 2023. The European System of Central Banks Statistics Committee has endorsed a strategy to implement revised national accounts and IMF BPM7 standards in Europe by decade-end, with the current assessment still based on BPM6.