FENStatS Newsletter - Q1/2026

edited by Jaione Etxeberria

Dear colleagues and FENStatS members,

I am pleased to share the latest FENStatS news and updates from our national societies. As we continue to bridge the gap between national societies and the broader European statistical landscape, our focus remains on three pillars: funding, literacy, and international collaboration.

I am delighted to invite you to our 5th ERC Information Webinar on April 24, 2026. This partnership with the European Research Council (ERC) is a vital resource for our community. We are honoured to host Maria Gonzalez (ERC Scientific Officer) alongside three distinguished grantees with statistical projects——Anna Chaimani, Christoph Rothe, and Alexandra Carpentier——who will share their firsthand experiences on the competitive ERC landscape.

In our ongoing fight against misinformation, FENStatS is taking a leading role in European project submissions. I want to publicly congratulate our Statistical Literacy Working Group for their tireless leadership. FENStatS has also supported other initiative led by our members to strengthen skills among high school students and teachers, with a specific focus on inclusion, digital proficiency, and encouraging girls' engagement in our field. I wish all a great success.

FENStatS also echoes the findings of the 2025 UK Statistics Assembly, a landmark event that gathered over 600 participants to shape the future of official statistics. We believe such initiatives are essential for a robust statistical system and we encourage you to read the Independent Report named in this issue.

Finally, I want to remind you that the next FENStatS General Assembly will take place within our first SIS-FENStatS meeting in Rome next June. The exact place and day will be announced very soon. I hope to see you all there.

With warm regards to all members of our societies,

Lola Ugarte
FENStatS President

5th ERC Information Webinar for Statisticians on Funding Opportunities

This event is organised in partnership with the European Research Council (ERC) and will take place on April 24, 2026, from 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM (CEST).

Webinar Program

11:00 – Lola Ugarte, FENStatS President: Opening

11:05 – Maria Gonzalez, ERC Scientific Officer: Presentation of the available grants, how to apply for them and the general framework of evaluations

11:35 – Testimonials, experience of grantees preparing submissions and the interview process

Anna Chaimani / LS7 CoG 2025
KaLeIDO-CARE: Knowledge and Learning Integration Dynamic Open (KaLeIDO) Systems
Christoph Rothe / SH1 CoG 2016
RD-ADVANCE: Advancing Econometric Methods for Regression Discontinuity Designs
Alexandra Carpentier / PE1 CoG 2025
SOCE: Statistical Optimality and Computational Efficiency

12:15 – Q&A

12:30 – Webinar Closing

Attendance is free of charge upon prior registration. Registered participants will receive the webinar link one day before the event. Registration for the event is available here.

Practical information regarding the 1st FENStatS Scientific Meeting

Registration fees

Early Bird: 390 € (if paid before April 30, 2026).

Submission of contributions

Invited sessions within FENStatS may follow different contribution formats:

Abstracts: All speakers must submit a one- or two-page abstract of their talk via the general submission system on the conference website.
Short papers: Speakers may instead submit a short paper (4-6 pages). If submitted, this contribution will be included in the pre-conference proceedings book published by Springer Nature (with an ISBN).
Opt-out of Publication: If a speaker does not wish to have their work published in the proceedings, they should submit only the one-two page abstract, which will still be accepted and managed within their session.

Important Deadlines

Submission of short papers/abstracts: March 28, 2026
Notification of decision: April 3, 2026
Submission of revised versions: April 6, 2026

Registration fees

Early Bird: 390 € (if paid before April 30, 2026).

More info here.

Significance magazine subscription discount

FENStatS members are entitled to a discounted online subscription rate to Significance magazine, representing less than one third of the cost of a standard personal subscription.

How to claim the discount

1. Visit the “Purchase” page on the Oxford Academic website.

2. Scroll down to the ‘Personal’ section.

3. Select the offer: “Members – The Federation of European National Statistical Societies”.

4. Get Involved

Editor Anna Britten welcomes enquiries, letters, and article proposals from FENStatS members. Feel free to contact here at a.britten@rss.org.uk.

FENStatS echoes the findings of the Independent Report of the 2025 UK Statistics Assembly

The first Statistical Assembly jointly organised by the UK Statistics Authority and the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) took place on 22 January 2025. It sought to bring together the widest possible range of users and producers of official statistics to discuss the priorities, opportunities and challenges facing the statistical system in the short to medium term. That system encompasses the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the wider Government Statistical Service (GSS), other UK-wide and devolved public bodies that produce official statistics, and indeed other sources which feed, or could feed, into official statistics.

In total, more than 600 participants took this opportunity to join in the discussion about the statistics of the future, priorities, specialised fields and cross-sectional topics.

Beyond the sessions on particular topics, the assembly also hosted presentations from people outside the UK statistical system, to give an international perspective.

FENStatS Executive Committee opines that this was a great initiative!

The whole independent report is available here.

News from ECAS

New leadership elected for ECAS

A new leadership of the European Courses in Advanced Statistics (ECAS) has been elected following presentations to ECAS members.

The new ECAS leaderships is as follows:

President: Lígia Henriques-Rodrigues (lcarodrigues@ciencias.ulisboa.pt)
Associate Professor at the University of Lisbon and Board Member of the Portuguese Statistical Society

Vice-President: Josip Arneric
Professor at the University of Zagreb and President of the Croatian Statistical Association

The cooperation between FENStatS and ECAS has been instrumental in strengthening ties within the European statistical community. We look forward to continued collaboration and wish the new ECAS leadership every success in their upcoming term.

Upcoming ECAS courses in 2026

Multiple Hypothesis Testing
Helsinki, Finland | Hanken School of Economics, 23–27 May 2026
https://tilastoseura.fi/en/multiple_testing

ECAS–ENBIS Course: Adaptive Machine Learning for Time Series Forecasting
Florence, Italy, 6 September 2026
https://conferences.enbis.org/event/86/

Call for proposals and contributions

Members are encouraged to propose new courses or books within the ECAS framework. Proposals can be directed to Lígia Henriques-Rodrigues or local ECAS representatives.

The ECAS–Springer book series is also available for those interested in contributing a volume to this prestigious collection.

News from national statistical societies

Statistical Society of Slovenia

Basic Data Analytics Literacy. Irena Ograjenšek, the former president of the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics (ENBIS) gave an invited talk with the title What Not To Do With The Basic Data Analytics Literacy in the framework of the webinar, co-organized by ENBIS and the team running the EU-financed FOR Project on January 20, 2026. The project is dedicated to developing data analysis and interpretation skills to distinguish real from fake information in digital and social media. More details are available on the project’s website.

Young Statisticians Europe. On Tuesday, February 24, 2026, Young Statisticians Europe representatives in the SSS's coordination committee met for a regular online meeting. They discussed details of current non-government organization status documents submission, as well as future plans. Furthermore, 8 representatives from the United Kingdom, Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Austria and Slovenia joined the meeting in addition to a young statistician from Serbia. Z. Lukic.

In 2026, the association’s website was migrated to the Arnes web platform, which is free of charge for the association. The beginning of the year was dedicated to collecting and finalizing contributions for the association’s annual publication, which is about to be released about March 2026. An amendment to the association’s statute was adopted, which now allows members to vote remotely and enables a shorter waiting time to reach quorum at meetings.

Royal Statistical Society of Belgium

The Royal Statistical Society of Belgium is happy to announce that the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Royal Statistical Society of Belgium will take place in Antwerp on November 19–20, 2026.

The Royal Statistical Society of Belgium announces that its Vice President, Eugen Pircalabelu, will be the Society's new representative on the General Assembly of FENStatS.

Cyprus Statistical Society

The Cyprus Statistical Society, together with Frederick University, will co-organize the 7th Annual Conference of the Cyprus Statistical Society on Friday, June 19, 2026, at the Frederick University premises. Following the success of the previous six conferences, which attracted a large number of participants, this event promises another engaging program.