EU production system — statistical units

KEY POINTS

The regulation lays down a list of 8 statistical units:

1. the enterprise — a unit producing goods or services which has a certain degree of autonomy in decision-making, especially in the allocation of its current resources, e.g. a small business;
2. the institutional unit — a unit with decision-making autonomy in respect of its principal function and which keeps a complete set of accounts, e.g. companies or cooperatives, partnerships, public enterprises or non-profit institutions recognised as independent legal entities;
3. the enterprise group — an association of enterprises bound together by legal and/or financial links. It can have more than one decision-making centre, especially for policy on production, sales and profits and may centralise certain aspects of financial management and taxation;
4. the kind-of-activity unit (KAU) — groups all the parts of an enterprise contributing to the performance of an activity at class level (four digits) of NACE² Rev. 1 and corresponds to one or more operational subdivisions of the enterprise;
5. the unit of homogeneous production (UHP) — a unit characterised by a single activity which is identified by its homogeneous inputs, production process and outputs. The products which constitute the inputs and outputs are themselves distinguished by their physical characteristics, the extent to which they have been processed and the production technique used, by reference to a product classification. The unit of homogeneous production may correspond to an institutional unit or a part of a unit; on the other hand, it can never belong to 2 different institutional units;
6. the local unit — an enterprise or part of an enterprise (e. g. a workshop, factory, warehouse, office, mine or depot) situated in a geographically identified place. At or from this place, economic activity is carried out for which — with certain exceptions — one or more persons work (even if only part-time) for one and the same enterprise;
7. the local kind-of-activity unit (local KAU) — the part of a KAU which corresponds to a local unit;
8. the local unit of homogeneous production (local UHP) — the part of a UHP which corresponds to a local unit.

Defining statistical units

Statistical units are defined on the basis of 3 criteria:

• legal, accounting or organisational criteria;
• geographical criteria (local, regional, national, EU or international);
• activity criteria (activities are determined by reference to a specific level of NACE).

Relationship between the different types of statistical units

The relationship between the different types of statistical units can be summarised in the following way:

Committee

• The European Commission may adopt measures for the implementation of this regulation, including measures designed to adapt it to economic and technical progress.
• In 2009, the European Statistical System Committee replaced the Statistical Programme Committee. The committee is responsible for supporting the Commission in implementing this regulation. It comprises EU countries’ representatives and is chaired by the Commission.