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1. The Commission shall, in accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 12(2), institute a series of feasibility studies, to be undertaken by the Member States, in particular by those which cannot provide the data for NACE Rev. 2 ◄ sections L, M, N, and O (Article 3(2)) or the breakdown of the index estimating total labour costs, excluding bonuses (Article 4(2)).

2. The feasibility studies shall be carried out, taking into account the benefits of collecting the data in relation to the cost of collection and the burden on business, to assess:

(a) how the quarterly labour cost indices defined in Article 4(1) can be obtained for NACE sections L, M, N and O; and (b) how the index estimating total labour costs, excluding bonuses, defined in Article 4(2) can be obtained.

3. The Member States undertaking the feasibility studies shall submit an interim report on their results to the Commission no later than 31 December 2004. The participating Member States shall submit a final report on the feasibility studies to the Commission no later than 31 December 2005.

4. The feasibility studies concerning paragraph 2(a) shall take into account the results of the pilot studies referred to in the Annexes to Council Regulation (EC, Euratom) No 58/97 of 20 December 1996 concerning structural business statistics ().

5. Measures adopted under Article 11(h) pursuant to the results of the feasibility studies shall respect the principle of cost-effectiveness, as defined in Article 10 of Regulation (EC) No 322/97, including the minimisation of the burden on respondents.

6. The implementation of measures adopted under Article 11(h) pursuant to the results of the feasibility studies shall make possible the transmission of data for the first quarter of 2007, provided that the results of the feasibility studies allow for the cost-effective production of data of sufficient quality.