Regulation 2003/1059 - Establishment of a common classification of territorial units for statistics (NUTS)

Contents

  1. Summary of Legislation
  2. Common classification of territorial units for statistical purposes (NUTS)
  3. Legislative text

1.

Summary of Legislation

2.

Common classification of territorial units for statistical purposes (NUTS)

SUMMARY OF:

Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 establishing a common classification of territorial units for statistics (NUTS)

WHAT IS THE AIM OF THE REGULATION?

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    Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 sets out the rules for the management of the nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (NUTS), a hierarchical system for dividing up the economic territory of the European Union (EU) for the purpose of collecting, developing and harmonising European regional statistics, assessing levels of eligibility for EU Structural Funds and framing of EU regional policies.
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    It also contains rules for future amendments to the classification. This is to ensure that data refer to the same regional unit for a certain period of time. This is important especially for statistical time series.
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    It has been amended several times, including by:

KEY POINTS

The NUTS hierarchy

For each Member State, there is a three-level hierarchy of regional subdivisions which are based on minimum and maximum population thresholds, as shown below.

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    NUTS 1. Major socioeconomic regions, e.g. German Länder, Belgian Gewesten/Régions, Polish or Romanian macroregions.
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    NUTS 2. Basic regions for the application of regional policies, e.g. Belgian or Dutch provinces, Austrian Bundesländer, Czech regions (oblasti).
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    NUTS 3. Small regions for specific diagnoses, e.g. French départements, Bulgarian provinces (oblasti), Italian provinces.

The third level is a subdivision of the second level, the second level is a subdivision of the first level and the first level is a subdivision of the countries. NUTS does not cover the local (municipality) level. Where the population of a Member State as a whole is below the minimum threshold for a given NUTS level, the country itself constitutes a NUTS territorial unit of that level.

Classification criteria

The existing administrative units in the Member States have to be taken into account in NUTS. The NUTS level to which an existing administrative level corresponds is determined on the basis of the average population size of its administrative units as follows:

 

Level

Minimum population

Maximum population

NUTS 1

3 million

7 million

NUTS 2

800,000

3 million

NUTS 3

150,000

800,000

If, for a given level in the classification, there is no existing administrative level of an adequate size in a Member State, that level is to be established by aggregating an adequate number of smaller neighbouring administrative units. The resulting aggregated units form a ‘non-administrative level’ at which each non-administrative unit has to respect the population thresholds shown above. Deviations occur under particular geographical, socioeconomic, historical, cultural or environmental circumstances, especially in the islands and the outermost regions.

Territorial typologies (Tercet)

Amending Regulation (EU) 2017/2391 establishes a legal recognition of territorial typologies for the purpose of EU statistics. This makes it possible for thematic statistics regulations and policy initiatives to refer to these typologies for the purposes of collecting EU statistics and/or to target specific territories such as cities, urban, rural or coastal areas and regions in policy.

The regulation covers existing territorial typologies based on either NUTS level 3 (e.g. urban–rural typology, metropolitan regions) or the local administrative units (e.g. degree of urbanisation, cities, coastal areas). The regulation also covers the 1 km² grid level required to calculate the typologies, which are based on population distribution and density in the grid cells. It also lays down the conditions for the adoption of delegated acts by the European Commission, where appropriate.

The current NUTS classification, valid from 1 January 2021, lists 92 regions at NUTS 1 level, 242 regions at NUTS 2 level and 1,166 regions at NUTS 3 level.

Under the implementing act, Regulation (EC) No 11/2008, when an amendment is made to the NUTS classification, the Member State concerned must send to the Commission the time series for the new regional classification to replace data already sent.

FROM WHEN DOES THE REGULATION APPLY?

It has applied since 11 July 2003.

BACKGROUND

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    Since the 1970s, to produce regional statistics and assess levels of eligibility for EU Structural Funds on the basis of objective, quantitative criteria, the EU has developed the NUTS classification as a single, coherent system for dividing up its territory geographically.
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    All Member States have their own systems of government and administrative structure, with some more centralised than others. They also vary enormously in terms of population, surface area and levels of development. NUTS has been developed by Eurostat specifically with this diversity of circumstances in mind.
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    For more information, see:

MAIN DOCUMENT

Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 May 2003 on the establishment of a common classification of territorial units for statistics (NUTS) (OJ L 154, 21.6.2003, pp. 1–41)

Successive amendments to Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 have been incorporated in the original text. This consolidated version is of documentary value only.

RELATED DOCUMENTS

Regulation (EU) 2021/690 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 28 April 2021 establishing a programme for the internal market, competitiveness of enterprises, including small and medium-sized enterprises, the area of plants, animals, food and feed, and European statistics (Single Market Programme) and repealing Regulations (EU) No 99/2013, (EU) No 1287/2013, (EU) No 254/2014 and (EU) No 652/2014 (OJ L 153, 3.5.2021, pp. 1–47)

Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2021/1130 of 5 July 2021 setting out the list of regions eligible for funding from the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund Plus and of Member States eligible for funding from the Cohesion Fund for the period 2021–2027 (notified under document C(2021) 4894) (OJ L 244, 9.7.2021, pp. 10–20)

last update 14.07.2021

This summary has been adopted from EUR-Lex.

3.

Legislative text

Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 May 2003 on the establishment of a common classification of territorial units for statistics (NUTS)