Territorial typologies

European regional 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.

These typologies are already in use in EU legislation, for instance in EU regulation 522/2014 which refers to the degree of urbanisation of local administrative units (LAUs) to define eligibility for European regional development fund support to carry out innovative actions in cities or towns and suburbs.

In order to ensure a harmonised application of the typologies and allow for cross-referencing from other acts and programmes, Eurostat launched a legislative initiative called ‘Tercet’, which is aiming at integrating the typologies into the NUTS regulation. Tercet can be found on EUR-Lex. This document includes much information about the background and the layout of the typologies.

The consolidated version of the amended NUTS regulation is available on EUR-Lex. In depth-information on the typologies can be found in the  methodological manual on territorial typologies.

Tercet only covers the most basic and most relevant typologies, as outlined below.

Regional level (NUTS 3)