RSSeNEWS to be determined...

The Greek National Statistics Service has been compared to collapsed energy trader Enron as an investigation into official debt statistics continues.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Patience Wheatcroft said that "the true level of debt was masked with some fancy transactions that kept the nasty truth from the nation's balance sheet". According to the latest opinion poll, the majority of Germans want Greece expelled from the euro zone rather than receive any bail out involving their money: "Why, they might rightly wonder, should they risk putting their cash into a country equivalent to Enron."

Eurostat, the EU's statistical office, is investigating Greek government currency swaps which may have been used to conceal the true level of debt and has requested detailed information by 19 February. On 15 February the European Commission asked member states to consider granting Eurostat auditing powers in order to review the Greek deals more thoroughly. Members rejected a similar EC proposal in 2005 over fears that Luxembourg was gaining too much power over nation states.

But Belgian finance minister Didier Reynders has questioned the impartiality of Eurostats' decision making and suggested that larger member states have undue influence. He highlighted what he believed were inconsistencies in Eurostsat's stance on accounting practices employed by telecommunication companies. Reynders says that if Eurostat's powers are to be widened, greater transparency and autonomy for the statistics office is required.

An Eurostat spokeperson denied the accusation, told euobserver.com: "Eurostat's role is to treat all member states equally".

The affair has shone further light on the issue of political interference with statistics. The former head of the Greek National Statistical Service Manolis Kontopirakis resigned after a new socialist government replaced the conservative administration in October and issued revised figures that showed the 2009 deficit was 12.7 per cent of GDP rather than the 3.7 per cent previously forecast.

Kontopirakis says that the statistics office was pressured by the Finance Ministry. That claim was picked up by Enrico Giovannini, chairman of the Italian national statistics institute ISTAT, who called for legal protection to ensure the autonomy of national statistics agencies. In the UK, critics of the ONS have suggested its financial figures are influenced by the Treasury.