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At the beginning of the 1970s, Eurostat set up the NUTS classification as a single, coherent system for dividing up the EU's territory in order to produce regional statistics for the Community. For around thirty years, implementation and updating of the NUTS classification was managed under a series of ‘gentlemen's agreements’ between the Member States and Eurostat.

Work on the EU regulation 1059/2003, to give NUTS a legal status started in spring 2000. This was adopted in May 2003 and entered into force in July 2003.

The regulation also specifies stability of the classification for at least three years. Stability makes sure that data refers to the same regional unit for a certain period of time. This is crucial for statistics, in particular for time-series.

However, sometimes national interests require changing the regional breakdown of a country. When this happens the country concerned informs the European Commission about the changes. The Commission in turn amends the classification at the end of period of stability according the rules of the NUTS regulation.

This visual illustrates the correspondence between NUTS versions and years. It shows that the NUTS regulation entered into force in July 2003. It was the so called NUTS 2003. It was applicable until 2007. Between 2008 and 2011 the so-called NUTS 2006 was applicable. Between 2012 and 2014 the NUTS 2010 was applicable. Between 2015 and 2017 the NUTS 2013 was applicable. Between 2018 and 2020 the NUTS 2016 was applicable. Between 2021 and 2023 the NUTS 2021 is applicable.

A first regular amendment to the annexes was adopted by EU regulation 105/2007 and the NUTS version 2003 was replaced by version 2006 on 1 January 2008. This was preceded by completions of the NUTS classification with the regional breakdowns of the countries that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007 (please see EU regulation 1888/2005 and EU regulation 176/2008).

The second regular amendment to the annexes was adopted by EU regulation 31/2011, entered into force on 7 February 2011 and shall apply, with regard to the transmission of data to the Commission (Eurostat), from 1 January 2012.

The third regular amendment to the annexes was adopted by EU regulation 1319/2013, entered into force on 31 December 2013 and shall apply, with regard to the transmission of data to the Commission (Eurostat), from 1 January 2015.

The fourth, extraordinary amendment to the annexes was adopted by EU regulation 868/2014, entered into force on 8 August 2014 and applies, with regard to the transmission of data to the Commission (Eurostat), from 1 January 2015. Please note that any mentioning of ‘NUTS 2013’ here, in our databases or elsewhere includes the changes of the extraordinary amendment of 2014, thanks to an agreement with the Member State concerned.

The fifth amendment to the annexes (a regular one) was adopted by EU regulation 2016/2066, entered into force on 19 December 2016 and shall apply, regarding the transmission of data to the Commission (Eurostat), from 1 January 2018.

The NUTS regulation was amended by the Tercet regulation on 18 January 2018, which introduced a number of territorial typologies into it; see the section on territorial typologies for more details. The consolidated version of the amended NUTS regulation is available on EUR-Lex.

The sixth amendment to the annexes was adopted by Commission delegated regulation 2019/1755, entered into force on 8 August 2019 and applies, with regard to the transmission of data to the Commission (Eurostat), from 1 January 2021.

Download the lists of changes between the various NUTS versions:

In case of an amendment to the classification, the Member State concerned has to replace historical data by time series according to the new regional breakdown within 2 years. The decision on the list of the time series and their lengths is subject to feasibility evaluation.

Maps showing the changes between NUTS 2013 and NUTS 2016 versions can be found on the maps page.

‘Linked data’ is a method of publishing structured data including historical time series so that it can be interlinked and become more useful through semantic queries. The Sparql endpoint can be used to perform queries on the NUTS dataset