STATISTISCHES BUNDESAMT

Their core work

STATISTISCHES BUNDESAMT (Destatis) is Germany's Federal Statistical Office — the primary authority for producing, validating, and publishing official statistics on the German economy and society. In EU research projects, their core contribution is access to high-quality administrative and survey microdata that academic or private research teams cannot obtain elsewhere, combined with deep methodological expertise in statistical measurement. Within H2020, they operated as a data provider and methodological partner: in MAKSWELL they contributed to constructing well-being and sustainable development indicator frameworks for policy use, and in MICROPROD they provided firm-level and national accounts microdata to analyze productivity trends across Europe. Their value to any consortium is essentially the credibility and reach of official national statistics.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

Destatis entered H2020 through MAKSWELL (2017), focusing on the policy-facing side of statistics: how to build and communicate well-being and sustainable development indicators for governments. By 2019, with MICROPROD, the focus shifted firmly toward hard economic measurement — productivity slowdown, income inequality, allocative efficiency, and the role of intangible assets and global value chains in explaining secular stagnation. This is a meaningful shift from indicator design for policy communication toward frontier economic research using firm-level microdata. The trend suggests Destatis is positioning its microdata infrastructure as a research asset for academic and policy economics, not just a reporting function.

Destatis is moving toward becoming a research-grade microdata hub for European economic analysis, making them a strong candidate for future projects on industrial transformation, labor market measurement, or digital economy statistics.

How they like to work

Destatis has participated exclusively as a consortium partner — never as project coordinator — across both H2020 projects, which is typical for national statistical offices that contribute data and methodological credibility rather than drive research agendas. Their 15 unique partners across 8 countries for just 2 projects suggests they join mid-to-large consortia where their data access opens doors that no private partner can. Organizations considering them as a partner should expect a reliable, rules-bound institution: excellent on data quality and methodology, less flexible on data sharing timelines or bespoke requests.

Destatis has built connections with 15 distinct partners across 8 countries through only 2 projects, suggesting they join well-networked international consortia rather than bilateral arrangements. No geographic concentration is visible from the data, pointing to a broad European academic and policy research network.

What sets them apart

No private company, university, or research institute can replicate what Destatis brings: legally mandated access to Germany's official administrative microdata — business registers, national accounts, firm-level surveys — with the statistical authority to validate findings against the national record. For any consortium studying European productivity, inequality, or economic structure, a German national statistical office is a near-essential partner for credibility with EU institutions and peer reviewers. Their relatively small H2020 footprint means they are selective, and a partnership with them signals methodological seriousness to reviewers and funders.

Highlights from their portfolio

• MICROPROD
  The larger and more research-intensive of the two projects (EUR 158,000), directly addressing the EU's productivity puzzle through improved firm-level microdata — one of the most policy-relevant economic research questions of the past decade.
• MAKSWELL
  A CSA project linking official statistics to sustainable development and well-being policy frameworks, demonstrating Destatis's role beyond GDP measurement in shaping how governments track societal progress.