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?

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) geographically 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.
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.
It has been amended several times, including by:
- Regulations (EC) No 1888/2005, (EC) No 176/2008 and (EU) No 517/2013 to take account of the accession of new EU Member States;
- Regulations (EC) No 105/2007, (EU) No 31/2011, (EU) No 1319/2013, (EU) No 868/2014, (EU) 2016/2066 and Delegated Regulations 2019/1755 and 2023/674 which amend the annexes to take account of amendments to the classification;
- amending Regulation (EU) 2017/2391 introducing legal status to territorial typologies linked to the NUTS classification – see below.

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.

NUTS 1. Major socioeconomic regions, e.g. German Länder, Belgian Gewesten/Régions, Polish or Romanian macroregions.
NUTS 2. Basic regions for the application of regional policies, e.g. Belgian or Dutch provinces, Austrian Bundesländer, Czech oblasti.
NUTS 3. Small regions for specific purposes, e.g. French départements, Bulgarian 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 Member States. 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 Member State 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 of an existing administrative level is determined by the average population size of its administrative units, as shown below.

Level	Minimum population	Maximum population
NUTS 1	3 million	7 million
NUTS 2	800,000	3 million
NUTS 3	150,000	800,000

If there is no existing administrative level of adequate size in a Member State for a given level in the classification, that level is made up 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. Exceptions occur under particular geographical, socioeconomic, historical, cultural or environmental circumstances, especially in 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 in policies, such as cities, or urban, rural or coastal areas and regions.

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 previous data.

FROM WHEN DOES THE REGULATION APPLY?

It has applied since 11 July 2003.

BACKGROUND

Since the 1970s, the EU has developed the NUTS classification as a single, coherent system for dividing up its territory geographically, in order to produce regional statistics and assess levels of eligibility for EU Structural Funds on the basis of objective, quantitative criteria.
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.
For further information, see:
- NUTS – Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics (Eurostat).

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 into the original text. This consolidated version is of documentary value only.

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