Abstract

Eurostat is the statistical office of the European Union, and at the heart of the European Statistical System (ESS) – a collaboration with national statistical institutes which works to provide comparable statistics at the European level. Formally, Eurostat is a Directorate-General of the European Commission (one of the better-known European Union institutions).

Martin Karlberg, who graduated from Stockholm University in the 1990s, joined Eurostat 20 years ago and is now deputy head of the Eurostat unit that is responsible for data & metadata services and standards. He will share his personal experience of working for Eurostat – and the European Commission in general (and how very different his current job often is from what he was trained to do during his statistics studies). His talk will cover various aspects of EU activities – in particular what Eurostat (and the ESS) actually does, and how the way of producing and disseminating European statistics (and official statistics in general) have changed (and may change) over time.

The talk will also provide the audience with some information on what they could do to improve their chances to get the chance to work at or for Eurostat – or the European Union institutions in general.