Reference metadata describe statistical concepts and methodologies used for the collection and generation of data. They provide information on data quality and, since they are strongly content-oriented, assist users in interpreting the data. Reference metadata, unlike structural metadata, can be decoupled from the data.
Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union
1.2. Contact organisation unit
E2: Environmental statistics and accounts; sustainable development
1.3. Contact name
Confidential because of GDPR
1.4. Contact person function
Confidential because of GDPR
1.5. Contact mail address
2920 Luxembourg LUXEMBOURG
1.6. Contact email address
Confidential because of GDPR
1.7. Contact phone number
Confidential because of GDPR
1.8. Contact fax number
Confidential because of GDPR
2.1. Metadata last certified
14 February 2022
2.2. Metadata last posted
14 February 2022
2.3. Metadata last update
14 February 2024
3.1. Data description
Economic data on forestry and logging, physical and monetary data on supply and use of wood, and employment data.
Aggregates include output, intermediate consumption, gross value added, fixed capital consumption, gross fixed capital formation and different measures of income of forestry and logging. The data are in current prices and use the concepts and definitions of National Accounts. They are collected as part of European Forest Accounts (EFA), which also covers wooded land, timber, output of the forestry industry by type, and labour input in annual work units (AWU). Data on AWU collected in EFA and published in for_awu are harmonized to 1 AWU =1800 working hours a year (i.e. they may differ from nationally published data depending on the conversion factor).
Employment data from Eurostat's Labour Force Survey (LFS) are presented as well, covering estimates of the number of employees in forestry and logging, the manufacture of wood and products of wood and cork, the manufacture of paper and paper products, and the manufacture of furniture. There are two separate tables because of the change in the EU's classification of economic activities from NACE Rev. 1.1 to NACE Rev. 2 in 2008.
Sources: questionnaire on European Forest Accounts (EFA) and LFS . The questionnaire and its explanatory notes can be accessed from Eurostat's methodology page on forestry.
Estimation of missing data for EFA: data for output, intermediate consumption, gross and net value added, compensation of employees, consumption of fixed capital and net operating surplus are gap-filled by Eurostat (indicated by the s-footnote) for countries and years where missing. The estimation procedure is as follows: 1) for countries who never reported for EFA, these variables are gapfilled based on National Accounts data for NACE A02 (source: nama_10a_64); 2) for countries who reported data for EFA only for some years and these are well aligned with National Accounts data, the missing datapoints are gap-filled from National Accounts data for NACE A02; 3) for countries who reported data for EFA only for some years and there are not well-allighned with National Accounts data, the missing variables are gap-filled with estimates based on National Accounts data for NACE A02 adjusted using the ratio of EFA-to-National Accounts for a concrete variable - output, intermediate consumption, compensation of employees or consumption of fixed capital; whereas gross and net value added, and net operating surplus are gap-filled as balancing items between respective variables.
3.2. Classification system
The classifications used for EFA are NACE Rev. 2 (2008), CPA Ver. 2.1 (2015), SNA 2008 and ESA 2010.
The forest definitions are those of FAO/FRA 2015.
The classifications used for the Labour Force Surveys are NACE Rev. 1.1, NACE Rev. 2 and ISCED for the level of education.
3.3. Coverage - sector
NACE Rev. 2 sector covered by EFA: Forestry and logging (02)
NACE Rev. 2 sectors covered by LFS:Forestry and logging (02), Manufacture of wood and wood products (16), Manufacture of pulp, paper and paper products (17), Manufacture of furniture (31)
3.4. Statistical concepts and definitions
Forest accounts provide a detailed view of forest-related assets (land and timber), activities (mainly forestry and logging) and flows of wood products in a structure closely related to, but going beyond, national accounts. Forest accounts are thus a satellite account with respect to National Accounts.
The accounting data present aggregates for the economic activities of forestry and logging in each country. The units of data collection should be local kind-of-activity units or enterprises, but not all countries have such information, particularly on the forestry activities of farms mainly engaged in agriculture.
3.6. Statistical population
Main economic aggregates, such as output, intermediate consumption, gross value added, fixed capital consumption, gross fixed capital formation and different measures of income of forestry and logging, broken down into their components
Labour input in forestry and in the downstream wood and paper industries
Output of forestry by type and institutional sector
Supply and use of wood in the rough by all industries
3.7. Reference area
EU Member States, EFTA countries and selected candidate countries.
Data for France cover only mainland France without the overseas territories and dominions French Guyana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion or Mayotte.
3.8. Coverage - Time
A few time series are from 1986-2004 (historical series); the predecessor data collection IEEAF is for 2005-2011, and the current EFA begins in 2012. Definitions and concepts are consistent across the time series unless indicated with a b) footnote (or d) footnote).
3.9. Base period
Not applicable
Million national currency - current prices
Million EUR - current prices
Tonne (supply and use)
Annual work unit (AWU) - harmonized to 1 AWU = 1800 working hours per year, unless indicated with a d) flag where other, country-specific definition applies.
Thousand persons (employed; self-employed)
Calendar year.
6.1. Institutional Mandate - legal acts and other agreements
No legal base - only gentlemen's agreement.
6.2. Institutional Mandate - data sharing
Not applicable
7.1. Confidentiality - policy
Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4)) of 11 March 2009 (OJ L 87, p. 164), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.
7.2. Confidentiality - data treatment
Not applicable
8.1. Release calendar
Data are released once per year, in December.
8.2. Release calendar access
Not available
8.3. Release policy - user access
In line with the Community legal framework and the European Statistics Code of Practice Eurostat disseminates European statistics on it's website (see item 10 - 'Accessibility and clarity') respecting professional independence and in an objective, professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably. The detailed arrangements are governed by the Eurostat protocol on impartial access to Eurostat data for users.
Annual
10.1. Dissemination format - News release
Online news releases
10.2. Dissemination format - Publications
Forest Europe's report on the State of Europe's Forests (every 5 years)
A series of validation checks against pre-defined validation rules are performed to assess internal and time-series consistency of EFA returns; external consistency with national accounts and data on wood products and removals from the Joint Forest Sector Questionnaire.
11.2. Quality management - assessment
Not available
12.1. Relevance - User Needs
Policy-makers including rural development; researchers. See a 2018 presentation for a full list of users.
12.2. Relevance - User Satisfaction
Not available
12.3. Completeness
Reporting varies a little over years. 18 Member States, two EFTA countries and one candidate country submitted data for the 2023 data collection.
13.1. Accuracy - overall
Agreement with national accounts is possible only when those data are used as the starting point. Eurostat requests data providers to go beyond national accounts and this means separating the activity of forestry from the activity of logging, with the first providing the input material for the second. This leads to higher numbers of total gross value added than those usually produced by national accounts.
13.2. Sampling error
Not applicable
13.3. Non-sampling error
Not applicable
14.1. Timeliness
23 months after the end of the reference year
14.2. Punctuality
Data collection follows a data collection and production calendar. Data provided after the final deadline (late September) are not published that year. They are validated and published the following year.
15.1. Comparability - geographical
In general, countries follow the EFA explanatory notes and National Accounts for concepts and definitions. However, some differences occur due to national practices. These are clearly flagged with the d-footnote in Eurostat's database.
Bulgaria: overreporting of output and intermediate consumption as a result of including secondary forestry activites of industries other than forestry and logging.
Croatia: not reporting item "Work-in-progress on cultivated biological assets" by the definiton of National Accounts; under-reporting for item "Forest trees" and "Trees, tree plants and forest tree seeds" as a result of not including the net annual increment of timber in cultivated forests (forest avaiable for wood supply)
Portugal and Finland: underreporting item "Forest trees" and "Trees, tree plants and forest tree seeds" as a result of deducting removals from the net annual increment of timber in cultivated forests (forest avaiable for wood supply) in "Forest trees" (i.e. reporting "Forest trees" identical to item "Work-in-progress on cultivated biological assets")
Employment data flagged with d) suggest that employment is quintified using a national definition of AWU instead of the EFA-harmonized one, for which 1 AWU = 1800 working hours a year.
15.2. Comparability - over time
Good within the same country. Changes in concepts or definitions are flagged with the b-footnote.
15.3. Coherence - cross domain
Cross-comparisons with wood products data show that coherence is not good yet in this respect. Cross-comparison with FAO - FRA on forest land and the volume of timber shows very good coherence, expcet for Slovenia. Cross-comparison with data on forest area collected for climate policies (LULUCF) shows good coherence, except for Croatia. Observed large differences for France and Portugal are explained by EFA data excluding forests beyond mainland Europe.
15.4. Coherence - internal
Good among the different tables of the same EFA questionnaire.
6 person-months for Eurostat and ca 1-4 person-months for each data provider for regular reporting.
17.1. Data revision - policy
The general Eurostat revision policy applies to this domain.
Corrections by the country correspondents are encouraged.
17.2. Data revision - practice
All reported errors (once validated) result in corrections of the disseminated data.
Reported errors that are deemed to be significant are corrected in the disseminated data as soon as the correct data have been validated.
Data are only published once they are deemed to be sufficiently complete for all data providers contributing to the aggregate.
New data are only used to update disseminated data if provided according to the provision schedule set by Eurostat.
All methodology issues are discussed at the meetings of Eurostat's Working group on Forestry statistics and accounts. Revisions are assessed and large revisions are consulted with the data provider.
18.1. Source data
Data collection is carried out by NSIs and research institutes working on their behalf. See a 2018 presentation for a full list of sources.
A set of validation rules is applied to assure internal and time-series consistency and improve consistency with related data (national accounts, FAO, JFSQ). Countries are asked to justify large differences and values where plausibility questions arise.
18.5. Data compilation
Gaps are filled with national accounts aggregate data when countries fail to report, to be able to produced EU aggregates. See details in item 3.1. Data description.
18.6. Adjustment
Not appplicable
Not applicable
Economic data on forestry and logging, physical and monetary data on supply and use of wood, and employment data.
Aggregates include output, intermediate consumption, gross value added, fixed capital consumption, gross fixed capital formation and different measures of income of forestry and logging. The data are in current prices and use the concepts and definitions of National Accounts. They are collected as part of European Forest Accounts (EFA), which also covers wooded land, timber, output of the forestry industry by type, and labour input in annual work units (AWU). Data on AWU collected in EFA and published in for_awu are harmonized to 1 AWU =1800 working hours a year (i.e. they may differ from nationally published data depending on the conversion factor).
Employment data from Eurostat's Labour Force Survey (LFS) are presented as well, covering estimates of the number of employees in forestry and logging, the manufacture of wood and products of wood and cork, the manufacture of paper and paper products, and the manufacture of furniture. There are two separate tables because of the change in the EU's classification of economic activities from NACE Rev. 1.1 to NACE Rev. 2 in 2008.
Sources: questionnaire on European Forest Accounts (EFA) and LFS . The questionnaire and its explanatory notes can be accessed from Eurostat's methodology page on forestry.
Estimation of missing data for EFA: data for output, intermediate consumption, gross and net value added, compensation of employees, consumption of fixed capital and net operating surplus are gap-filled by Eurostat (indicated by the s-footnote) for countries and years where missing. The estimation procedure is as follows: 1) for countries who never reported for EFA, these variables are gapfilled based on National Accounts data for NACE A02 (source: nama_10a_64); 2) for countries who reported data for EFA only for some years and these are well aligned with National Accounts data, the missing datapoints are gap-filled from National Accounts data for NACE A02; 3) for countries who reported data for EFA only for some years and there are not well-allighned with National Accounts data, the missing variables are gap-filled with estimates based on National Accounts data for NACE A02 adjusted using the ratio of EFA-to-National Accounts for a concrete variable - output, intermediate consumption, compensation of employees or consumption of fixed capital; whereas gross and net value added, and net operating surplus are gap-filled as balancing items between respective variables.
14 February 2024
Forest accounts provide a detailed view of forest-related assets (land and timber), activities (mainly forestry and logging) and flows of wood products in a structure closely related to, but going beyond, national accounts. Forest accounts are thus a satellite account with respect to National Accounts.
The accounting data present aggregates for the economic activities of forestry and logging in each country. The units of data collection should be local kind-of-activity units or enterprises, but not all countries have such information, particularly on the forestry activities of farms mainly engaged in agriculture.
Main economic aggregates, such as output, intermediate consumption, gross value added, fixed capital consumption, gross fixed capital formation and different measures of income of forestry and logging, broken down into their components
Labour input in forestry and in the downstream wood and paper industries
Output of forestry by type and institutional sector
Supply and use of wood in the rough by all industries
EU Member States, EFTA countries and selected candidate countries.
Data for France cover only mainland France without the overseas territories and dominions French Guyana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion or Mayotte.
Calendar year.
Agreement with national accounts is possible only when those data are used as the starting point. Eurostat requests data providers to go beyond national accounts and this means separating the activity of forestry from the activity of logging, with the first providing the input material for the second. This leads to higher numbers of total gross value added than those usually produced by national accounts.
Million national currency - current prices
Million EUR - current prices
Tonne (supply and use)
Annual work unit (AWU) - harmonized to 1 AWU = 1800 working hours per year, unless indicated with a d) flag where other, country-specific definition applies.
Thousand persons (employed; self-employed)
Gaps are filled with national accounts aggregate data when countries fail to report, to be able to produced EU aggregates. See details in item 3.1. Data description.
Data collection is carried out by NSIs and research institutes working on their behalf. See a 2018 presentation for a full list of sources.
Annual
23 months after the end of the reference year
In general, countries follow the EFA explanatory notes and National Accounts for concepts and definitions. However, some differences occur due to national practices. These are clearly flagged with the d-footnote in Eurostat's database.
Bulgaria: overreporting of output and intermediate consumption as a result of including secondary forestry activites of industries other than forestry and logging.
Croatia: not reporting item "Work-in-progress on cultivated biological assets" by the definiton of National Accounts; under-reporting for item "Forest trees" and "Trees, tree plants and forest tree seeds" as a result of not including the net annual increment of timber in cultivated forests (forest avaiable for wood supply)
Portugal and Finland: underreporting item "Forest trees" and "Trees, tree plants and forest tree seeds" as a result of deducting removals from the net annual increment of timber in cultivated forests (forest avaiable for wood supply) in "Forest trees" (i.e. reporting "Forest trees" identical to item "Work-in-progress on cultivated biological assets")
Employment data flagged with d) suggest that employment is quintified using a national definition of AWU instead of the EFA-harmonized one, for which 1 AWU = 1800 working hours a year.
Good within the same country. Changes in concepts or definitions are flagged with the b-footnote.
