Overview
To reference countries’ regions for statistical purposes, the EU has developed a classification known as NUTS (Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics).
NUTS divides each EU country into 3 levels:
- NUTS 1: major socio-economic regions
- NUTS 2: basic regions (for regional policies)
- NUTS 3: small regions (for specific diagnoses)
The NUTS 2024 classification is valid from 1 January 2024. It lists 92 regions at NUTS 1, 244 regions at NUTS 2 and 1 165 regions at NUTS 3 level.
NUTS is used for:
- collecting, developing and harmonising European regional statistics
- carrying out socio-economic analyses of the regions
- framing of EU regional policies
- regions eligible for support from cohesion policy have been defined at NUTS 2 level
- the cohesion report has so far mainly been prepared at NUTS 2 level