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European Commission - Speech Address by Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis to the 111th conference of Directors General of the National Statistical Institutes Brussels, 28 October 2026 Presidents and Directors General, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me to the 111 th conference of Directors General of the National Statistical Institutes. I am sorry not to be able to be wi...
European Commission - Speech Address by Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis to the 111th conference of Directors General of the National Statistical Institutes Brussels, 28 October 2026 Presidents and Directors General, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen. Good morning. Thank you for inviting me to the 111 th conference of Directors General of the National Statistical Institutes. I am sorry not to be able to be with you in person. The question you are asking at this year's conference could not be more important or timely: How can we make European data and official statistics AI-ready and responsibly redistributed, at a time when AI is transforming how those statistics are produced, shared and used? You are meeting in a fitting place. In 1905, a young clerk working in Bern published a groundbreaking paper on Brownian motion. His name was Albert Einstein. And his paper showed that the random movement of tiny particles can be explained through statistics. More than a century later, the same mathematics underpins the diffusion models behind today's AI image generators. So, some of the foundations of modern generative AI were laid just a short walk from where you are now sitting. It is increasingly clear that AI is the strategic technology that will define the 21 st century. We have entered a new era. One where AI will power everything from productivity gains to advanced weapons. The European Statistical System recognises this new reality. In May this year, it endorsed four core work strands on AI that set the right course: First, applying AI to improve statistical production. Second, measuring the adoption and impact of AI across our economy and society. Third, integrating AI into the daily operations of national statistical authorities and Eurostat. Fourth, making the dissemination of official statistics truly AI-ready. This last point is the focus of this year's conference. AI has already become an important intermediary between official statistics and the public. But AI can draw on unverified sources, or strip away the methods and context behind a figure. So, the question you will discuss over the next two days goes to the heart of our future: How can official statistics be found, understood and correctly attributed? This discussion concerns much more than statistical methods and digital infrastructure. What is at stake is the integrity of evidence-based policymaking itself. We must ensure that European official statistics are discoverable and correctly used by AI systems, so that our statistics continue to serve the policymakers, businesses and citizens who depend on them. And this is why the AI-readiness of European official statistics matters so much. It means making official statistics easy to find and use for people and machines alike, without losing what makes them valuable: their source, their methods and their quality. I am glad that this conference will tackle these questions. I look forward to the outcomes that these two days will produce. And to finding out how your discussions could translate into practical steps for the European Statistical System. Finally, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office and my colleagues at Eurostat for organising this conference. I would also like to thank all National Statistical Institutes for their hard work and continuous innovation in European statistics. And for the measures you have already taken towards enhancing AI-readiness in your organisations and the European Statistical System as a whole. Let me conclude by returning to Einstein. His work on Brownian motion showed that out of millions of random, unpredictable movements, careful measurement can reveal the bigger picture. That is exactly what official statistics do. So, thank you all for your work to help Europe see that bigger picture more clearly. With that, I wish you all a productive and insightful conference. Thank you. SPEECH/26/2279 <@rel_link@>
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