The concept of the FADN was launched in 1965, when Council Regulation 79/65 established the legal basis for the organisation of the network. It consists of an annual survey carried out by the Member States of the European Union. The services responsible in the Union for the operation of the FADN collect every year accountancy data from a sample of the agricultural holdings in the European Union. Derived from national surveys, the FADN is the only source of micro-economic data that is harmonised, i.e. the bookkeeping principles are the same in all countries. Holdings are selected to take part in the survey on the basis of sampling plans established at the level of each region in the Union. The survey does not cover all the agricultural holdings in the Union but only those which due to their size could be considered commercial. The methodology applied aims to provide representative data along three dimensions: region, economic size and type of farming. While the European Commission is the primary user of analyses based on FADN-data, aggregated data can be found in the Standard Results database.