Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 as regards the territorial typologies (Tercet)

Eurostat publishes European statistics in many statistical domains at regional level according to Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 on the establishment of a common classification of territorial units for statistics (NUTS). These statistics are widely used in the context of EU regional policy and to determine eligibility for regions under the cohesion funds.

Over the past few years, Eurostat has expanded the range of statistics published on a number of territorial typologies to address EU policy-makers’ increasing need for such data in the context of cohesion and territorial development policies. The Commission has defined these territorial typologies in cooperation with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and adopted methodologies to set up and maintain them.

The NUTS Regulation does not yet include or legally define these territorial typologies to determine urban, rural, coastal and/or other areas and regions in the EU, although they are already being used. The fact that these typologies and their methodologies have no legal recognition and are not formally recognised by the European Statistical System (ESS) is an issue that needs to be addressed to establish them as recognised, impartial and transparent statistical typologies.

The main policy objectives of the initiative are the following:

1. Establish a legal recognition of territorial typologies, including the definition of cities, for the purpose of European statistics. A regulation amending Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 will integrate the territorial typologies into the current NUTS Regulation. This will make it possible for thematic statistical regulations and policy initiatives to refer to these territorial typologies for the purpose of collecting European statistics and/or to target specific territories such as cities, urban, rural or coastal areas and regions in policy.

2. Lay down the core definitions and statistical criteria for the different territorial typologies. To create methodological transparency and to safeguard the stability of the territorial typologies over time, the core definitions and criteria for creating and updating the typologies need to be specified in the regulation and its implementing provisions. For this purpose, the initiative will use the already existing methodologies for the different typologies.

3. Ensure harmonised and transparent application and use of the territorial typologies at EU level and in Member States. The initiative aims to improve the comparability and stability of the typologies. This will have a positive impact on the compilation and dissemination of European regional statistics.

4. In the context of the alignment of Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 to the new rules of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), powers currently conferred on the Commission by that regulation to adopt acts designed to amend non-essential elements of the regulation by supplementing it, in accordance with the regulatory procedure with scrutiny, should be provided for by powers to adopt delegated acts.

EUR-Lex: COM(2016)788: Follow the progress of this proposal through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2016:788:FIN

Eurostat: NUTS - Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/nuts

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