DS Metadata > Overview

Eurostat publishes a large amount of metadata. These provide the background information needed to fully understand and accurately interpret the European statistics released by Eurostat.

This approach follows principle 15 of the European statistics code of practice, which states that data should always be made available with supporting metadata.

Types of metadata

There are 2 types of statistical metadata: structural metadata and reference metadata.

Structural metadata

Structural metadata are used to identify statistical data such as titles, subtitles, short descriptions, dimension names or variable names.

Structural metadata include

  • titles of the variables and dimensions of statistical datasets
  • units of measurement such as EUR
  • code lists – for example, for territorial coding
  • data formats
  • potential value ranges
  • time dimensions
  • value ranges of flags
  • classifications used

Data and structural metadata must go together. This can be illustrated by the following example: the number 3 566 833 is meaningless unless its accompanying structural metadata is provided. Namely that this is the total number of women in Bulgaria on 1 January 2021.

Reference metadata

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.

This means that they can be generated, collected, or disseminated separately from the statistics to which they refer. They can also be associated with different levels of data, such as with entire collections, datasets from a given country, or a single data item concerning 1 country and 1 year.

There are two types of statistical metadata: structural metadata and reference metadata. The structural metadata are used to identify statistical data. Data and structural metadata must go together. Without column names, dimension names, attribute descriptions, etc., it is not possible to understand the statistical data. The reference metadata provide a quality assessment of the dataset as a whole, such as a general description of the dates, classifications used, information on data quality etc. Contrary to structural metadata, reference metadata can be decoupled from the data; this means, they can be generated, collected or disseminated separately from the statistics to which they refer. There are different types of reference metadata such as conceptual metadata, methodological metadata and quality metadata.
 

Available metadata by Eurostat

The list below provides links to different kinds of metadata sources made available by Eurostat:

Metadata from EU members

The national statistical institutes of the EU countries also provide metadata for their national statistics. Eurostat maintains a set of links to these national metadata.