Website: Statistics: Enlargement countries

The European Union is currently made up of 28 Member States, while there is an ongoing process for its future enlargement. At the moment several countries are candidate countries and are waiting to join the EU, while others are potential candidates. Croatia became the 28th Member State of the EU on 1 July 2013.

Candidate countries: Montenegro; Iceland; the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia; Albania; Serbia and Turkey.
Potential candidates: Bosnia and Herzegovina; Kosovo.

Eurostat follows the progress of candidate and potential candidates in complying with the EU acqis (the body of EU law) in the field of statistics as well as collecting data from these countries. Eurostat provides technical assistance and support to the national statistical institutes of candidate countries and potential candidates, to enable them to produce and disseminate harmonised and good quality data according to European standards.

The main objectives for aligning candidate countries and potential candidates with the EU acquis in statistics are presented in the "Strategy for Statistical Cooperation with the Enlargement countries 2014-2020".

The strategy established the following objectives:
- reaching and maintaining compliance with the EU acquis in statistics
- making statistics a better tool for policy purposes
- integrating the national statistical institutes (NSIs) into the European Statistical System
- implementing the European Statistics Code of Practice
- strengthening the management capacity of the NSI.

The Policy Group for statistical cooperation (PGSC) and the Management Group for statistical cooperation (MGSC) deal with the planning, monitoring and evaluation of cooperation programmes in statistics.