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NUTS. What is it? How does this relate to keep.eu?

The NUTS regions are defined by Eurostat.

The Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics, abbreviated NUTS (from French Nomenclature des Unités Territoriales Statistiques) is a geographical nomenclature subdividing the economic territory of the European Union (EU) into regions at three different levels (NUTS 1, 2 and 3 respectively, moving from larger to smaller territorial units). Above NUTS 1, there is the ‘national’ level of the Member States. The NUTS is based on Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 May 2003 on the establishment of a common classification of territorial units for statistics (NUTS), which is regularly updated.

  • NUTS1: Major socio-economic regions (one NUTS1 area typically contains several NUTS2 areas);
  • NUTS2: Basic regions for the application of regional policies (one NUTS2 area typically contains several NUTS3 areas);
  • NUTS3: Small regions for specific diagnoses.

In keep.eu, NUTS0 is used to refer to countries for user convenience, even though the NUTS0 level is not recognized as such by Eurostat.

Besides Eurostats’s NUTS, for countries not covered by this system, keep.eu uses other sources. To learn more please refer to the FAQ entry on geocoding.