The liabilities are called contingent in the sense that they are by nature only potential and not actual liabilities. The relevance of collecting this kind of information is recognised by ESA 2010, paragraph 5.11: ''Although contingent assets and contingent liabilities are not recorded in the accounts, they are important for policy and analysis, and information on them needs to be collected and presented as supplementary data. Even though no payments may turn out to be due for contingent assets and contingent liabilities, a high level of contingencies may indicate an undesirable level of risk on the part of those units offering them. For all sub-sectors of general government, Member States shall publish relevant information on contingent liabilities with potentially large impacts on public budgets, including government guarantees, non-performing loans, and liabilities stemming from the operation of public corporations, including the extent thereof. Member States shall also publish information on the participation of general government in the capital of private and public corporations in respect of economically significant amounts".

In order to assist EU Member States in the implementation of the new statistical requirements of the Directive, Eurostat conducted a Task Force in co-operation with EU Member States and DG ECFIN. Its final report provides, inter alia, a set of templates and related notes indicating the methodology, the scope of compulsory information, the periodicity and the timeliness for national and Eurostat publication of data on contingent liabilities