EU Census

The census will be the first in Germany since reunification. Expense and sensitive data protection issues mean that it will less comprehensive than those carried out in West Germany in 1987 and in East Germany in 1981. But it will nonetheless comprise data gathered from up to 8 million citizens and 17.5 million property-owners.

The project has been mired in controversy over a range of issues. Most problematically, the various states objected to the financial contribution they were expected to make. The preparations alone are set to cost 176 million euros ($261.4 million), in addition to the 137 million-euro expense of the actual census.

Harmonizing data

But there are even more ambitious plans afoot.

Keen to end the practice of 27 states asking different questions at different times, Brussels this month discussed the possibility of a unified EU census, which would need approval from EU governments.

Last week, plans to harmonize census data across the EU were approved by members of the committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs at the European Parliament.

They include a list of questions the EU would like all member states to ask on how people live -- including education, occupation, hours worked, and marital status -- which would result in better quality data on areas such as housing and population. The European Commission says it needs this information to formulate policies.

While this form of information is usually gathered nationally, the Commission is arguing that it needs more central control to help its work.

"The data has to be fully comparable at the European level, and is often requested at a level of regional detail and in a quality that can only be guaranteed by European legislation on population and housing censuses," its said in a statement.

Prurient questions

The data requested would include ethnicity, literacy, size and type of family, religion, while the survey also wants to find out about issues such as computer literacy, number of cars owned, cooking facilities and "durable consumer goods possessed by the household."

Other questions were considered too prurient and have since been dropped. Supposedly, one would have asked the "date(s) of the beginning of consensual union(s) of women having ever been in a consensual union: (ii) first consensual union and (ii) current consensual union."

Many felt these questions were too intrusive, while others feared that confidentiality could not be guaranteed.

Doubtful that privacy could be ensured on a European level, Thomas Mann, a Christian Democrat and Member of the European Parliament, believed that it was inadvisable to pass national data on to the EU's Eurostat office in Luxembourg.

"Does anyone seriously think that data protection is as thorough everywhere as it is in Germany?" he asked.