Microdata linking EuroGroups register
Why are these statistics needed?
The existing statistics from structural business statistics (SBS) provide data on economic variables for the whole population of enterprises, but they do not distinguish whether an enterprise is independent or part of a domestic or multinational enterprise group. However, the performance of enterprises can vary significantly depending on whether they are independent or dependent, meaning under control of an enterprise group.
The experimental statistics on microdata linking between EuroGroups register (EGR) and SBS provide new insights on enterprises belonging to a multinational enterprise (MNE) group. They allow to introduce a new breakdown about the origin of the control of the enterprise for the existing SBS enterprise population data.
This enables users to compare the economic performance of independent enterprises with that of dependent enterprises belonging to a MNE group. In addition, users can compare indicators for enterprises that belong to all-resident enterprise groups and MNE groups.
Why are they experimental?
The statistics are experimental as they cover only 6 EU countries – Belgium, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden – and 1 country of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), namely Norway. These countries voluntary produced the new SBS breakdown on the origin of the control of the enterprise by using information available in the EGR.
How are they produced?
The countries applied a so-called microdata linking (MDL) method to link the information on enterprises available in structural business statistics (SBS) to the national statistical business registers (SBRs) and to the EGR. These 2 registers are the main sources for linking statistical and administrative data information in business statistics.
MDL is a recognized and powerful method to provide new statistics or breakdowns without increasing the burden on respondents to collect more data.
Eurostat has processed and validated the data provided by the countries.
For further details, please consult our methodological note.
Access to the statistics
Feedback
To help Eurostat improve these experimental statistics, users and researchers are kindly invited to give us their feedback by email:
- What further breakdowns would interest you?
- How relevant is the availability of these statistics for your analysis, given that there is no data for the whole EU and EFTA countries?