Archive:The EU in the world introduction

This Statistics Explained online publication has been archived. The latest edition, Key figures on the EU in the world – 2023 edition, can be found on the Eurostat website.

The EU in the world provides users of official statistics with a snapshot of the wealth of information that is available on Eurostat’s website and the websites of other international organisations. The publication provides a balanced set of indicators, with a broad cross-section of information; it is composed of an introduction and three main parts — people and society, economy and business, and environment and natural resources — which together contain 14 different articles.

The publication aims to present information for the EU-27 (the EU of 27 Member States), occasionally the euro area (based on 19 members), as well as 16 other major advanced or emerging economies from around the world, in other words, all members of the G20. Note that data are generally presented for the EU-27 and for the 16 other non-EU G20 members. In the text, statements such as ‘among G20 members’ refer (unless otherwise specified) to the EU-27 as a whole and the 16 non-EU members of the G20.

The EU in the world is published every second year with annual data. This 2020 edition only describes the situation in the EU and the G20 Member States up to the year 2018 at the most. As a consequence, first findings of any COVID-19 related implications will only be possible in the 2022 edition of The EU in the world, with the full scale of the crisis being revealed in later editions only.

Full article

Eurostat and the European statistical system

Eurostat is the statistical office of the European Union (EU), situated in Luxembourg. Its task is to provide the EU with statistics at a European level that enable comparisons between countries and regions. Eurostat’s mission statement is ‘Trusted statistics. Informed Europeans. Better decisions. We provide high quality statistics for Europe’. Eurostat aims:

to provide other European institutions and the governments of the EU Member States with the information needed to design, implement, monitor and evaluate EU policies;
to disseminate statistics to the European public and enterprises and to all economic and social agents involved in decision-making;
to implement a set of standards, methods and organisational structures which allow comparable, reliable and relevant statistics to be produced throughout the EU, in line with the principles of the European statistics code of practice;
to improve the functioning of the European statistical system (ESS), to support the EU Member States, and to assist in the development of statistical systems at an international level.

Since the creation of a European statistical office in 1952, there has always been a realisation that the planning and implementation of European policies must be based on reliable and comparable statistics. Eurostat does not work alone. As a result, the ESS was built-up gradually to provide comparable statistics across the EU.

The ESS is a partnership between Eurostat and the national statistical offices and other national authorities responsible in each EU Member State for the development, production and dissemination of European statistics; this partnership includes the member countries of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). The ESS also coordinates its work with enlargement countries and with other European Commission services, agencies, the European Central Bank (ECB) and international organisations such as the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Eurostat and its partners in the ESS aim to provide relevant, impartial, reliable and comparable statistical data. Indeed, access to high quality statistics and Eurostat’s obligation for trustworthiness are enshrined in law.

Cooperation on statistics with international and worldwide organisations

In a globalised world, statistical organisations are working to define and implement common concepts, classifications and methods for making worldwide comparisons of official statistics. European and international standards have been developed through joint work conducted by national statistical systems and international organisations such as the European Commission, the UN, the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD. This work has led to the formation of a worldwide statistical system that strives to use a common language, international methods and standards to produce comparable data at regional, national and international levels.

Examples of the results of this work include:

classifications — such as the International standard classification of education for various levels of education and the International standard industrial classification for economic activities;
manuals — for example, the system of national accounts, the Canberra handbook on household income statistics and the Frascati manual for research and development statistics.

The Group of Twenty or G20

In September 1999, the finance ministers and central bank governors of the Group of Seven (or G7) members announced their intention to ‘broaden the dialogue on key economic and financial policy issues’. The establishment of the G20 recognised considerable changes in the international economic landscape, such as the growing importance of emerging economies, or the increasing integration of the world’s economy and financial markets. Between November 2008 and June 2019, the G20 held 14 Leaders’ Summits to seek agreements on worldwide economic matters. The next G20 Leaders’ Summit will be held in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) in November 2020.

Map 1: EU-27 and non-EU G20 members

The G20 brings together the world’s major advanced and emerging economies, comprising 19 country members and the EU. The country members include three EU Member States (Germany, France and Italy), and 16 non-EU members from the rest of the world: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States. The EU (coloured blue) and the 16 non-EU members from the rest of the world (coloured orange) are shown in Map 1. In 2018, the G20 members covered approximately 60 % of the world’s land area, generated 88 % of the world's gross domestic product (GDP) and were home to 63 % of the world’s population.

Publication structure and coverage

The EU in the world provides a snapshot of the wealth of information that is available on Eurostat’s website and the websites of other international organisations. The publication provides a balanced set of indicators, with a broad cross-section of information; it is composed of an introduction and three main parts — people and society, economy and business, and environment and natural resources — which together contain 14 different articles.

The publication aims to present information for the EU-27 (the EU of 27 Member States) ^[1], occasionally the euro area (based on 19 members), as well as 16 other major advanced or emerging economies from around the world, in other words, all members of the G20. Note that data are generally presented for the EU-27 and for the 16 other non-EU G20 members. In the text, statements such as ‘among G20 members’ refer (unless otherwise specified) to the EU-27 as a whole and the 16 non-EU members of the G20.

Please note that some of the countries that are not members of the G20, and therefore not covered by this publication, are larger (in terms of population, economy, land area and other measures) than some of the G20 countries. For example, Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh have the fifth, seventh and eighth largest populations in the world, but are not G20 members and therefore not covered by this publication.

Spatial data coverage

The EU-27 and euro area (EA-19) aggregates that are provided in The EU in the world include information for all of the Member States or estimates for missing information; any incomplete totals or estimates that have been compiled are systematically footnoted. Time series for these geographical aggregates are based on a fixed set of Member States for the whole of the time period — any time series for the EU-27 refers to a sum or an average for all 27 current Member States regardless of when they joined the EU. The harmonised consumer price index (see Figure 12 in the article on economy and finance) is an exception and reflects changes in the composition of the EU. In a similar vein, the data for the EA-19 are consistently presented for the 19 current members of the euro area.

When available, information is also presented for a world total; in the event that data for the world are not available this heading has been excluded from figures.

If data for a reference period are not available for a particular country, then efforts have been made to fill maps and figures with data for previous reference years (these exceptions are footnoted), normally going back up to three years, but sometimes longer. In order to try to present data for a common reference period, in exceptional cases data for more recent reference periods that were available at the time of the data extractions have not been shown for a small number of G20 members.

The order of the G20 members used in the tables in this publication follows the alphabetical order of the members’ names in English; in most of the maps and figures the countries and their data are ranked according to the values of a particular indicator. The data for China presented in this publication systematically exclude Hong Kong and Macao unless otherwise stated.

The boundaries and names shown and the designations used in this publication do not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the European Union.

Data sources

The indicators presented are often compiled according to international — sometimes worldwide — standards, for example, UN standards for national accounts and the IMF’s standards for balance of payments statistics. Although most data are based on international concepts and definitions there may be discrepancies in the methods used to compile the data.

Data for the EU, euro area and the United Kingdom

Almost all of the indicators presented for the EU, the euro area and the United Kingdom have been drawn from Eurobase, Eurostat’s online database. Eurobase is updated regularly, so there may be differences between the data presented in this publication and data that are subsequently downloaded. In exceptional cases some indicators for the EU and the United Kingdom have been extracted from international sources, for example, when values are converted using purchasing power parities (based on constant price dollar series), or for comparability reasons. Some of the data presented for the euro area are sourced from the European Central Bank.

G20 members from the rest of the world

For the G20 members that are not part of the EU, other than the United Kingdom, the data presented in this publication have generally been compiled by a range of official international organisations listed in the Table below. In a few cases the data available from these international sources have been supplemented by data for individual members from national statistics authorities or other national official sources. For some of the indicators a range of international statistical sources are available, each with their own policies and practices concerning data management (for example, concerning data validation, correction of errors, estimation of missing data, and frequency of updating). In general, attempts have been made to use only one source for each indicator in order to provide comparable datasets across the G20 members.

Table 1: Data sources
Source: Eurostat

Data extraction and processing

The statistical data presented in this publication were extracted during January and February 2020 and the accompanying text was drafted in February and March 2020.

Many of the international sources from which data were extracted present monetary data in national currencies and/or United States dollars (USD), whereas Eurostat data are normally presented in national currencies and/or euro (EUR). Monetary data for the G20 members from the rest of the world have been converted into euro using current exchange rates. Data that are expressed in USD having been converted from national currencies using purchasing power parities (PPPs) have been left in dollar based purchasing power standards. Equally, time series for indicators expressed in constant prices have not been converted from the original currency (whether for national currencies or in USD).

Table 2: Exchange rates, 2008-2018
(1 EUR = … national currency)
Source: Eurostat (ert_bil_eur_a) and the World Bank (World Development Indicators)

Several indicators have been standardised by expressing their values relative to an appropriate measure for the size of a country, for example, in relation to the total number of inhabitants. Where necessary and available, these size measures have been extracted from United Nations’ databases.

Data presentation

Many of the data sources used to produce The EU in the world contain metadata that provide information on the status of particular values or data series. In order to improve readability, only the most significant information has been included as footnotes under the figures. Where appropriate, breaks in series are indicated in the footnotes provided under each map or figure.

The term billion is used to signify a thousand million and a trillion is used to signify a thousand billion.

Online glossary

Many terms and abbreviations in the online and portable document format (PDF) versions of this publication are linked to the glossary pages (thematic glossaries) of Eurostat’s Statistics Explained website (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained).

Access to Eurostat data

The simplest way to access Eurostat’s broad range of statistical information is through the Eurostat website (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat). Eurostat provides users with free access to its databases and all of its publications in PDF format via the internet. The website is updated daily and gives access to the latest and most comprehensive statistical information available on: the EU and euro area; the EU Member States; the United Kingdom, the EFTA countries; and the candidate countries. Furthermore, a number of databases provide statistical information for key indicators related to other non-member countries, notably for potential candidates and the European Neighbourhood Policy countries.

Eurostat online data code(s) — easy access to the freshest data

Eurostat online data codes, such as tps00001 and nama_10_gdp ^[2], allow users easy access to the most recent data on Eurobase. In this publication these online data codes are given as part of the source below each map and figure that makes use of Eurobase data. In the PDF version of this publication, the reader is led directly to the freshest data when clicking on the hyper-links for each online data code. Readers can access the freshest data by typing a standardised hyper-link into a web browser, https:/ /ec.europa.eu/eurostat/product?code=<data_code>&mode=view, where <data_code> is to be replaced by the online data code in question (for example, replacing <data_code> with nama_10_gdp). Online data codes can also be fed into the ‘Search’ function on Eurostat’s website, which is found in the upper-right corner of the Eurostat homepage, at https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat.

Note that the data on Eurostat’s website are frequently updated and that the description above presents the situation as of April 2020.

Notes

↑ Since 1/1/2020 the United Kingdom is no longer a member of the EU. It is nevertheless a G20 member and is included in this publication alongside the other non-EU G20 members.
↑ There are two types of online data codes: tables accessed using the TGM interface, for example tps00001, tepsr_sp320 or sdg_03_20; databases accessed using the Data Explorer interface, for example nama_10_gdp and sts_inpr_a.