Swiss Federal Statistical Office

Business Register Data

Espace de l'Europe 10, CH-2010 Neuchâtel

The EuroGroups register (EGR) is the statistical business register of Eurostat and the EU Member States and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries for multinational enterprise groups. The purpose of the EGR is to offer to statistical users a tool for coordinating frame population, to derive consistent statistical output with an improved quality in measuring global activities of European enterprises part of multinational enterprise groups.

The EGR produces data in yearly cycles and covers microdata on the groups and their enterprises and legal units. The EGR aims to register all multinational enterprise groups that have enterprises in EU Member States or EFTA countries, including European and non-European groups.

The Member States, EFTA countries and Eurostat exchange data on multinational enterprise groups and on the units belonging to those groups for the purposes of the European framework for statistical business registers to ensure the quality of the multinational enterprise group’s information in the Union.

The EGR brings together microdata on multinational enterprise groups from the EU and the EFTA countries' national statistical institutes, in line with the requirements of the Regulation (EU) No 2152/2019, and from a commercial data source for data outside the EU and EFTA.

Classification systems and main code lists used in the EGR are as follows:

• Statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community (NACE Rev. 2);
• European System of Accounts (ESA 2010);
• List of 2-digit country codes (ISO 3166-1);
• List of legal forms of the legal units;
• Currency codes (ISO 4217).

The coverage of the data transmitted to the EGR is defined in the Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 on European business statistics.

For the purposes of the European framework for statistical business registers, the following economic activities are considered:

• any activity comprising the offer of goods and services on a given market;
• non-market services contributing to the GDP;
• direct and indirect holdings of active legal units.

Holding assets and/or liabilities are also considered an economic activity.

Global group head

The global group head (GGH) of an enterprise group is the parent legal unit that is not controlled either directly or indirectly by any other legal unit. The subsidiary legal units of a subsidiary legal unit are considered to be subsidiaries of the parent legal unit.

Global decision centre

The global decision centre (GDC) of an enterprise group is the unit where the enterprise group level’s strategic decisions are taken. A group may have several decision-making centres or several units dedicated to a particular internal function, for example accounting or human resources. However, the decisions about the group are made only in the GDC. The GDC may be the GGH or another legal unit under the GGH.

Ultimate Controlling Institutional unit

The ultimate controlling institutional unit (UCI) of a foreign affiliate means the institutional unit higher up a foreign affiliate’s chain of control that is not controlled by another institutional unit.

Activity of unit

A statistical unit is considered to have been active during the reference period, if in said period it either realized
positive net turnover or produced outputs or had employees or performed investments.
A legal unit can be legally or administratively active without any economic activity, when the inactive legal unit
is part of an enterprise in combination with economically active legal units. Holding assets and/or liabilities
shall also be regarded as an economic activity.

Number of employees

The number of employees represents the average number of persons who were, at some time during the
reference period, employees of the statistical unit.

Number of employees and self -employed persons

The number of employees and self-employed persons is the sum of the Number of employees and Number of
self- employed persons. The number of self-employed persons is the average number of persons who were at
some time during the reference period the sole owners or joint owners of the statistical unit in which they work.
Family workers and outworkers whose income is a function of the value of the outputs of the statistical unit are
also included.

Net turnover

For all activities except for NACE 64, 65 and some activities of NACE 66 net turnover consists of all income
arising during the reference period in the course of ordinary activities of the statistical unit, and is presented net
of all price reductions, discounts and rebates granted by it.
Income is defined as increases in economic benefits during the reference period in the form of inflows or
enhancements of assets or decreases of liabilities that result in increases in equity, other than those relating to
contributions from equity participants.
The inflows referred to are arising from contracts with customers and are realized through the satisfaction by
the statistical unit of performance obligations as foreseen in said contracts. Usually, a performance obligation is
represented by the sale (transfer) of goods or the rendering of services, however, the gross inflows can also
contain revenues obtained as a yield on the use by others of the statistical unit’s assets.
Excluded from net turnover are:
— all taxes, duties or levies linked directly to revenue;
— any amounts collected on behalf of any principal, if the statistical unit is acting as an agent in its
relationship with said principal;
— all income not arising in the course of ordinary activities of the statistical unit. Usually, these types of
income are classified as ‘Other (operating) income’, ‘Financial income’, ‘Extra-ordinary income’ or under a
similar heading, depending on the respective set of generally accepted accounting standards used to prepare the
financial statements.
Infra-annual statistics may not be able to take into account aspects such as annual price reductions, subsidies,
rebates and discounts.
For the activities of NACE K6411, K6419 and K649 net turnover is defined as the value of output minus
subsidies or government grants.
For the activities of NACE K642 and K643 net turnover can be approximated by the total operating costs, if net
turnover is not available in the financial statements.
For the activities of NACE K6511, K6512 and K652 net turnover is defined as Gross premiums earned.
For the activities of NACE K653 the net turnover is defined as total pension contributions
For activities of NACE K66 for which net turnover is not available in the financial statements, net turnover is
defined as the value of output minus subsidies or government grants. For activities of NACE K66 for which net
turnover is available in the financial statements, the standard definition of net turnover applies.

Principal activity

The principal (or main) activity is the activity that contributes most to the total value added of a unit under
consideration. Ideally, the principal activity of the unit should be determined with reference to the value added
to the goods and services produced, by applying the top-down method. The top-down method follows a
hierarchical principle: the classification of the unit at the lowest level of the classification must be consistent
with the classification of the unit at higher levels. The principal activity so identified does not necessarily
account for 50 % or more of the unit’s total value added.
In the European Union the classification of principal activity is determined by reference to NACE Rev. 2, first
at the highest level of classification and then at more detailed levels (top-down method).

The statistical units maintained in the EGR are defined in accordance with the Regulation (EEC) No 696/93 on the statistical units for the observation and analysis of the production system in the Community.

The EGR frame contains the following units: Legal units, Enterprises and Multinational enterprise groups.

Legal units include:

- legal persons whose existence is recognized by law independently of the individuals or institutions which may own them or are members of them,

- natural persons who are engaged in an economic activity in their own right.

The legal unit always forms, either by itself or sometimes in combination with other legal units, the legal basis for the statistical unit known as the 'enterprise'.

Enterprise

The enterprise is the smallest combination of legal units that is an organizational unit producing goods or services, which benefits from a certain degree of autonomy in decision-making, especially for the allocation of its current resources. An enterprise carries out one or more activities at one or more locations. An enterprise may be a sole legal unit.

Multinational enterprise group

A multinational enterprise group is an enterprise group that has at least two enterprises or legal units located in different countries.  In business statistics also term ‘global enterprise group’ is used.

The data transmitted to the EGR during the cycle is made of the following datasets.

The data set with information on all incorporated resident legal units for the EGR Identification Service.

ISRLE file includes full population of resident legal units is sent to EGR for identification.

The data set with information on foreign legal units for the EGR Identification Service.

ISNORLE file including full population of foreign legal unit recorded in national statistical business register is sent to EGR for identification.

The data set with information on legal units.

LEU file including full resident legal unit belonging to a global enterprise group is sent to EGR for processing.

The data set with information on relationships of ownership and control.

REL file including the relationships between legal units is sent to EGR for processing:

• two resident legal units
• one resident and one foreign legal unit
• two foreign legal units from non EU+EFTA countries.

Relationships in the REL are:

• control relationships (>50%)
• minority relationships (<50%)

The data set with information on enterprises.

ENT file including full enterprises made of legal unit sent in LEU files is sent to EGR for processing.

The Data set with information on links between enterprises and legal units.

LEL file including full links between enterprise (ENT) and legal units (LEU) is sent to EGR for processing.

The Data set with information on enterprise groups of which country is the GDC country for the EuroGroups Register.

GEG file including the groups data is sent to the EGR for processing.

The groups’ variables are updated after receiving the preliminary frame.

The reference area for national statistical business register is the territory of the country. Concerning enterprise
groups any country outside the national territory may be relevant.
The swiss SBR also contains a number of foreign units for administrative use (they get the Swiss unique
identifier UID), especially units from Liechtenstein which have an economic activity in Switzerland. It is
planned to register more foreign units for administrative reasons (i.e. to manage authorisations for different
adminstrative instances). Those units are not always linked to enterprise groups.

The EGR frames are available from reference year 2008 onwards. NSI transmits data for the EGR production cycle since 2008 year.

Not applicable

The economic variables on employment are recorded in absolute figures.

The net turnover for enterprises is recorded in national currency CHF.

The net turnover and net total asset is recorded in national currency CHF.

The reference period for data sent to the EGR reflects the picture of 31 December of the given reference year.

Data transmitted to EGR during the EGR 2022 cycle includes data for the 2022 reference year.

The identification, economic variables (number of employees, turnover and economic activity) refer to the 2022 reference year.

The content of the national data sent to EGR is defined according the Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 on European business statistics.

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197 of 30 July 2020 is laying down the technical specifications and arrangements pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European business statistics.

Legal acts and other agreements - national level

• Federal Statistics Act: Art. 10 al 3. The Federal Office cooperates closely with the cantons in the maintenance of a Business and Enterprise Register (SBR) used as an aid in conducting surveys on businesses and enterprises. see link below "Federal Statistics Act"
• Federal Act on Data Protection, see link below.
• Federal Constitution of the Swiss Confederation, see link below.
• Ordonnance sur les émoluments et indemnités perçus pour les prestations de services statistiques des unités administratives de la Confédération, see link below.
• Ordonnance sur le Registre des entreprises et des établissements.

The legal framework setting up the procedures for EGR data exchanges and access to confidential data for the purpose of the European framework for statistical business registers are defined in the Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 on European business statistics (Art.10). 

At national level:

SBR shares data with Social Security Agency, VAT Administration, Customs Authorities, State Secretariat for
Economic Affairs SECO, Cantons, Registries of Commerce of Switzerland, Federal Office for Agriculture
FOAG. The legal basis is "Ordonnance sur le Registre des entreprises et des établissements", see link below.

European legislation:

• Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics;
• Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 on European business statistics (Art.10).

The national legislative measures or other formal procedures which prevent unauthorised disclosure of data that identify a person or economic entity either directly or indirectly include:

• Federal Statistics Act: Data Protection and Data Security Art. 14 Data protection and officialsecrecy, see link below
• Ordonnance sur le Registre des entreprises et des établissements, see link below
• Federal Act on Data Protection, see link below

EGR data are stored by the Commission (Eurostat) and by the national statistical authorities (NSAs) in the EU Member States and EFTA countries in a secure area with restricted and controlled access.

The transmission of the EGR data is done in an encrypted form and by electronic means via the Commission (Eurostat) single entry point for exchange of confidential data EDAMIS. 

Rules applied for treating the data set to ensure statistical confidentiality and prevent unauthorised disclosure are defined according to the policy rules (see section 7.1).

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

The micro-data exchange of confidential data on multinational enterprise groups and on the statistical units belonging to those groups takes place, exclusively for statistical purposes, between EU Member States and EFTA countries and the European Commission (Eurostat).

Where such exchange of confidential data is carried out to ensure the quality of the multinational enterprise groups information in the Union and the exchange is explicitly authorised by the competent NSA which provides the data, national central banks may be party to the exchange of confidential data, exclusively for statistical purposes.

Not applicable.

• EuroGroups Register communication space ( EGR wiki with restricted access)
• European business statistics methodological manual for statistical business registers – edition 2021

• ESS Data Quality Programme for statistical business registers is available on CIRCABC.
• A part of the quality report (metadata report) is published on the NSI website (see Annex)

Eurostat Data Quality Programme monitors the quality and compliance of the data transmitted by the countries to EGR using the instruments of the EBS quality framework.

At national level, the quality of the data sent to EGR is assured as follows: 

The quality is assured by applying the following quality management and assurance procedures:

• Legislation concerning quality assurance, Task Forces or Working Groups, etc.:
  • The Federal Council shall issue regulations on the recognition of certification procedures and the introduction of a data protection quality label. In doing so, it shall take account of international law and theinternationally recognised technical standards (see Annex)
• Methodological standards and guidelines assuring the quality of the production process and the output:
  • The different Business Register-teams have methodological standards and guidelines in order to guarantee data quality of the Register. There are monthly quality control meetings. There are also several weekly reports that identify data inconsistencies in the SBR. These reports are automatically sent to the data quality team.
• Data validation procedures in place
  • For every partner who sends us data, we have formalised expectations. Our system then checks automatically the input data (format, consistency). If there is a problem, feedback is sent to the partner. The"Update and Quality" group is made up of experts who update the numerous information received via different channels on a daily basis. They ensure that the updates are integrated in a uniform and structured manner and in accordance with predefined standards. This provides a clear and comprehensible picture of the situation of every Swiss company.
• Quality assessment activities undertaken
  • The "Quality Assurance" department determines the points to be checked and the errors in the Business Register. In addition, the IT scripts responsible for the automatic update of the Business Regsiter applications are checked. Automatic reports on data quality have been implemented.
• Data quality monitoring
  • In May 2022, SBR team has implemented a first version of quality indicators and dimensions in order to evaluate some aspects of SBR data (see Annex). The work is still in progress in order to improve those indicators.

The quality of statistical business register is monitored according the quality assurance procedure described in
concept 11.1.
The overall assessment results could be summarised as follows:

• Main strengths and weaknesses according to the standard quality criteria
  • Strengths:
    • constant update of data thanks to multiple sources
    • Use of the unique ID number
    • Good coverage and quality of the administrative sources
    • Even if Switzerland is not part of EU, the SBR has high level of EU harmonisation and standardisation.
    • In addition to the documentation mentioned in concept 11 and 12.1, an internal programm of quality checks is available to the internal users. The programm is published internally.
  • Weakness:
    • definition of enterprise unit is not implemented yet
    • lack of human and financial resources

SBR are important for the compilation of consistent and comparable European business statistics, establishing
efficient statistical survey frames, providing identification numbers of all the units and for linking to many
different sources, increasing statistical information and reducing the reporting burden on enterprises.
SBR are referred to as the ‘backbone’ in the production of economic statistics because they provide the core
infrastructure to ensure data consistency between various statistical outputs.

Since 2017, Eurostat together with the EU Member States conducts SBR user survey addressing users and
potential users of the national statistical business registers (NSBR) and the EuroGroups Register (EGR).

The latest SBR User Survey 2020 show that the NSBR are widely used at national level and users consider that
its quality had been significantly improved in the recent years. Most of the NSBR users (97%) had either no
issue or manageable issue regarding business registers coverage, units, variables, timeliness and frequency of
frames.

The results of the SBR User Survey 2020 are available on CIRCABC.

NSI has 3 ways of collecting User satisfation:

• Ticketing system, available for all NSI users
• Monthly bilateral meetings with SBR workers
• Regular Bilateral meetings for other users (NSI or external)

The completeness of national statistical business registers is annually assessed by Eurostat. The SBR
assessment results are provided to EU Member States and EFTA countries and presented at the Statistical
Business Registers Working Group (SBR WG).

The main issues regarding accuracy of the data are as follows:

• Undercoverage : We are still improving the process of group structure controls. We control and improve them but due to lack of human ressources, we cannot do it completely.
• Measurement error due to wrong identification : Some enterprise groups are splitted due to commercial data error. Group Head information is not allways correct. Error concerns several units

The actions taken to reduce bias (if any) and to improve accuracy of the data are as follows:

• Some actions are taken, but due to lack of human ressources work is still in progress to reduce bias

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

The EGR process refers to a reference year T and is run yearly over a period of 11 months, between May T+1 and March T+2.

Data transmitted to the EGR on time.

The geographical comparability of national statistical business registers is ensured by the application of
common definitions of the statistical units laid down in the Council Regulation (EEC) No 696/93.

The SBR variables are harmonised and set up in accordance with the Annex VIII to the
Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197 laying down technical specifications and arrangements
pursuant to Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 on European business statistics. Further guidelines on the
variables implementation in the national statistical business registers are given in the EBS methodological
manual for Statistical Business Registers (2021 edition).

NSBR frames are comparable for reference years 2008 to 2022.

Coherence of data sent to Eurostat with other data sources and statistical domains:

• Data sent to Eurostat are coherent with other data sources (commercial source) and other statistical domains

Data sent to EGR should be internally consistent. There is a set of standard quality checks that are routinely perform at national level before transmitting the data to Eurostat.

Not available.

Not applicable

Not applicable

The data are based on multisource process.

National data sent to EGR annually

Data sent to EGR are collected from:

• National Statistical business registers
• Administrative data sources.
• Commercial Data

Statistical analysis of the national statistical business register is carried out to ensure the quality of data and
frame populations provided to users.

Data validation procedures include:

• Format and file structure checks
  • For Profiling activities, format and file structure checks are manually made by Profilers.
  • For other sources as import/export data, employment data or turnover data, automatic checksare developped internally.
• Intra-file checks
  • Automatic checks (SQL oracle, SAS checks) in order to control format, existence of all variables, double entries, FTE vs. number of employees, taxes vs. turnover, etc.
• Intra-domain, intrasource checks (e.g time series checks)
  • Time series checks are done, for e.g. employement and turnover data
• Plausibility/consistency checks between domains inside the NSI
  • Plausibility checks for e.g. employement data (Profiling data (Business Register) vs. social security agency data (Structural Business Information Statistics)
• Plausibility/consistency checks between domains outside the NSI
  • Plausibility checks for e.g. import / export data (between NSI's Business Register and Federal Customs Administration) and enterprise group data (between NSI's Business Register and Swiss National Bank)
• Any other kind of validation
  • Manual checks with "Mutabox-System": Staff of Business Register validates BR-data due to requests made by businesses, cantons, State Secretariat of Economies and many other swiss institutions.

The procedures used to combine data from different sources:

• Integration of employement data: The annual employement data from the Social Security agencies have a priority compared to other sources (Profiling or other surveys).
• Implementation of turnover: data The integration is based on VAT data, and missing data are calculated based on an algorithm

The frame populations and annual copy of national statistical business register are produced as follows:

• Weekly Snapshot of SBR

Not applicable.

---