Report on the ASP / CNIS international conference, 19 June 2026
The international conference jointly organized by ASP and CNIS brought together, under the chairmanship of Mireille Elbaum and Bertrand du Marais, nearly 300 people on 19 June at the Institut de France to discuss the major issues for democracy raised by the professional independence of public statistics, at a time when it is being weakened, and even challenged, by the rise of populism.
Presentations by statisticians who are or have been confronted, in their positions as senior officials, with such situations, as well as by researchers and users, described very worrying situations in the United States. Problems of a somewhat different nature also exist in the United Kingdom and in Europe.
While the presentations by Mariana Kotzeva, Director-General of Eurostat, demonstrated the strength of the European statistical system and its members, including France, both in their legal foundations and governance and in the concrete exercise of good practices, the presentations also revealed a continuing decline in the resources allocated to public statistics in many countries, raising concerns about the support given to it and its efficiency.
The idea of a necessary coalition with research—itself weakened by a challenge to rationality—and with users, came up repeatedly in the discussions as a course of action to be pursued without delay to defend a founding common good for democracy.
