Greece’s Reckoning with an Honourable Statistician

The discussion about the professional independence of official statistics was given new impetus by the events surrounding the sovereign debt crisis in Greece. Particularly serious was the discrepancy between the obligation of government agencies to provide reliable financial statistical data and the observed practice of manipulating data prior to their dissemination and publication. These problems in Greek fiscal statistics have existed for a long time, but only became public knowledge in 2009, when it became clear that Greek government deficits and debt levels had been miscalculated for years. In fact, the resources of EYSE, the former Statistical Office of Greece, which was under strong political influence, were rather limited to avoid certain manipulations of the data. The chapter tells the story of Andreas V. Georgiou, who was mistreated in recent years as head of ELSTAT, the Greek Statistical Office established in July 2010. The Greek judiciary put him on trial for exposing the extent of the Greek financial crisis. The judges convicted him, but the reasoning was poor. The conclusion that should be drawn from his story is not to undermine official statistics. After all, reliable official statistics are the information that the public trusts. They are fundamental to democracy, democratic accountability, checks and balances, economic and social well-being, and progress in general. The example of Greece and the fate of Andreas V. Georgiou shows how important it is for statistical work to follow basic ethical principles. These are, above all, the principles of political independence, impartiality and objectivity in the collection, processing, and publication of statistical data. Deviations from these principles should be made public and corrected as soon as possible. In addition, operational criteria such as relevance, accuracy, timeliness and punctuality, accessibility and clarity, and comparability and coherence of data should be ensured in accordance with the quality standards developed by the international organisations and the European authorities. Much of this was not in order in Greece for a long time.