The role of the committee is determined by Law no. 51-711 of 7 June 1951 on legal obligation, coordination and confidentiality in the field of statistics (articles 6a, 7a and 7b).

The committee ensures compliance with the rules of statistical confidentiality.

It gives its opinion on requests for the communication of data covered by statistical confidentiality (data collected in statistical surveys or transmitted to the official statistical system for the purpose of compiling statistics) or by tax confidentiality.

The committee is competent to deal with requests for access to:

  • Individual data pertaining to personal and family life and, more generally, to facts and behaviour of a private nature collected under the Law of 1951 within the last seventy-five years, provided that the request is for the purposes of official statistics or for scientific or historic research
  • Individual data of an economic or financial nature collected under the Law of 1951, provided that the data is not to be used for purposes of tax inspection or economic penalties
  • Individual data collected by administrations, public bodies or private bodies responsible for a public service, provided that these data have been transmitted to INSEE or to a Ministerial Statistical Office for the purpose of producing public statistics and that the request is for scientific research or for an economic study.
  • Data covered by tax confidentiality.

The Statistical Confidentiality Committee may authorise public entities or private bodies to act as intermediaries in certain stages of the processing of a statistical survey, requiring them to become acquainted with individual information collected during this survey or previous surveys, on a temporary basis only (subcontracting).