Regional accounts
Regional accounts are a regional specification of the corresponding accounts of the national economy. They provide a regional breakdown for key variables, such as gross value added (GVA) and household income.
Overall, regional accounts use the same concepts as national accounts. However, due to conceptual and measurement limitations at regional level, the following gaps exist:
- regional accounts are not calculated for the expenditure approach,
- the available industry breakdown is more limited than at national level,
- the only accounts available by sector are household accounts.
Regional data are classified according to:
- the 'Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics' (NUTS). All variables are available by NUTS 2 level and a sub-set is available by NUTS 3 level,
- the 'Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community' (NACE) by 10 economic activities.
Release and revision policy
New data as well as revised ones for previous years for GDP, GVA and population are published by Eurostat on the day of its annual news article. This is usually at the end of February or beginning of March. For the other variables, data are published either on the same day or shortly after the news article. Revisions of regional accounts data follow the revision policy of national accounts data.
Data availability
Data cover the reference period from 2000 to the actual calendar year minus 2 years (t-2) for total GVA, GDP and employment. For other variables, it is minus 3 years (t-3).
EU members must provide historical series within 2 years after the first data transmission, and whenever a new NUTS classification is introduced.
Release of historical dataset
Eurostat releases a collection of the underlying data used in the latest seven regional Gross Domestic Product (GDP) news articles. The data are prepared for the purpose of performing revision analysis and offering users historical data based on the NUTS 2021 classification and the EU27 composition.
Sources of employment data
Multiple sources are used among the EU members for to compile regional employment data which are expressed in persons and in hours worked, based on the ESA 2010 framework. In order to assess this situation and make it more transparent for users, Eurostat invited the compilers of the data in 2019 to provide separate definitions for each NACE category with regards to employment expressed in persons. In 2022, the same exercise was done for employment expressed in hours worked. The main results are available in these reports:
- Sources used in EU Member States to compile ESA 2010 employment data measured in persons
- Sources and methods used in EU Member States to compile ESA 2010 employment data measured in hours worked
Regional accounts inventory
A detailed documentation of data sources and methods used for the compilation and calculation of regional accounts gross value added (GVA) by regions is available in PDF format for the following EU members:
