Federal Statistical Office Germany (Destatis)

E11 - Profiling of Enterprises, Enterprise Groups, Statistical Units

Federal Statistical Office Germany (Destatis), Gustav-Stresemann-Ring 11, 65180 Wiesbaden, Germany

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 legal unit is part of an enterprise in combination with other economically active legal units.
A legal unit is also active, if it controls other legal units.

Number of employees

Number of persons employed is defined as the total number of persons who work in the unit, including wage-earners.

Number of employees and self -employed persons

Number of persons employed is defined as the total number of persons who work in the unit, including wage-earners and self-employed persons (i.e., working proprietors, partners working regularly in the unit and unpaid family workers) as well as persons who work outside the unit but who belong to it and are paid by it (e.g., sales representatives, delivery personnel, repair and maintenance teams).

Net turnover

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.

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 send to EGR covered global data of all enterprise groups having at least one enterprise and/or legal unit in Germany.

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

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The economic variables on employment are recorded in absolute figures.

The net turnover for enterprises is recorded in EURO currency.

The net turnover and net total asset is recorded in millions in EURO currency.

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.

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). 

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:

• § 16 - Bundesstatistikgesetz (BStatG from 2022, Federal Statistics Law)

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).

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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.

NSI Germany exchanges information on multinational enterprise groups with:

• Other Member States for correction of group structures in EGR and European Profiling and TOP TIER Profiling in IPT
• National Central Bank (NCB) for FATS purposes and improving quality of EGR data

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

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: 

• Plausibility checks of all sources for information related to enterpise groups data
• Manual treatment of the largest enterprise groups in Germany, including their structure and group data

The quality assessment procedure includes:

• automatic validation procedures to check coherence between statistical units and their variables,
• data format and logical content of data
• crosschecks with other sources and data from previous years.

The EGR provides harmonised information on multinational enterprise groups and their enterprises in the EU and EFTA countries. The statistical users can use EGR coordinated frame populations to derive consistent statistical output with an improved quality in measuring global activities of European enterprises that are part of multinational enterprise groups.

In 2017, Eurostat conducted first SBR user consultation survey addressing users and potential users of the national statistical business registers (NSBR) and the EuroGroups Register (EGR). The second SBR user survey was opened for contributions by statistical users between November 2019 and
March 2020.
2020 SBR survey results show that the EGR is widely used and users consider that its quality had been significantly improved in the recent years. The EGR data are used mostly in Economic globalisation domain (35%) and Economy and finance (25%). Most of the respondents (71%) stated that they currently use EGR data for the production of official statistics at national level.

All information send by the member states and consolidated in EGR are available in the final frames.

The actions taken to monitor and to improve accuracy of the data sent to EGR are the following: 

• Comparing the delivered data with initial frames, preliminary frames and final frames
• Correction of incorrect group structures and the accuracy of the group data in Repair Action in EGR.

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

The data transmitted to the EGR during the cycle was on time.

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The data deliverd to EGR comes from:

• Commercial data provider
• Administrative data (e.g. national trade register, tax offices)
• National central bank
• National profiling of enterprises

National data sent to EGR annually

Data sent to EGR are collected from:

• National Statistical business registers
• Administrative data sources
• Commercial data provider
• Manual treatment of the largest enterprise groups in Germany

The EGR data validation process takes place continuously during EGR production process in between T+5 and T+15 months. The national statistical institutes contribute to the validation process at the group structures’ in repair phase by delivering relationships and data on enterprise groups to the EGR and also by pre-validate the EGR input file.

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No further comments.