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.
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 group population, to derive consistent statistical output with an improved quality in measuring global activities of European enterprises which are part of multinational enterprise groups.
The EGR produces data in yearly cycles and covers microdata on 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.
3.2. Classification system
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);
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.
3.4. Statistical concepts and definitions
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
This refers to all the type of work carried out by the unit, that generates economic revenue. It involves recording a description of all the goods or services produced by the unit. There may be more than one activity.
Number of employees
The number of employees is the number of persons who were for the employer in the unit (excluding working owners).
Number of employees and self-employed persons This is the total number of persons who work in the unit
Net turnover
This is the net sales revenue generated by the unit.
Principal activity
The principal activity of a unit is the activity that generates most value added and is coded using NACE Rev.2 classification.
3.5. Statistical unit
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.
3.6. Statistical population
The following datasets are transmitted to the EGR during each cycle:
ISRLE file: This dataset consists of the full population of all incorporated resident legal units to be included in the EGR Identification Service.
ISNORLE file: This dataset contains those foreign legal units recorded as either parents or subsidiaries in the National Statistical Business Register that need to be identified in the EGR Identification Service.
LEU file: This dataset contains information on the attributes of all the resident legal units which belong to a multinational enterprise group is sent to be present in the EGR core.
REL file: This dataset contains information on relationships of ownership and control between two legal units is sent to EGR for processing:
two resident legal units
one resident and one foreign legal unit
two foreign legal units.
Relationships in the REL are:
control relationships (>50%)
minority relationships (<50% and >10%)
ENT file: The data set with information on enterprises. This includes information on all the enterprises that are made of the legal units sent in LEU file sent to EGR for processing.
LEL file: The data set with information on links between enterprises and legal units. It includes information about which legal units (LEU) are enterprised (ENT) made of. The links may be one-to-one or one-to-many.
GEG file: The data set with information on enterprise groups of which country is the GDC country for the EuroGroups Register.
This includes groups data sent to the EGR for processing. The groups’ variables which are updated after receiving the preliminary frame are:
The country code of the UCI in cases where on the top of the group there is a natural person or a legal unit whose LEID was not found in the EGR IS (mainly, non-EU & EFTA countries)
The Group's web address
3.7. Reference area
The entire territory of Malta and any other country were affiliates are present.
3.8. Coverage - Time
The EGR frames are available from reference year 2008 onwards. NSO transmits data for the EGR production cycle since 2008.
3.9. Base period
Not applicable
The economic variables on employment are recorded in absolute figures.
The net turnover for enterprises is recorded in nominal values in EURO.
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 2023 cycle includes data for the 2023 reference year. The identification, economic variables (employment, turnover and economic activity) refer to the 2023 reference year.
6.1. Institutional Mandate - legal acts and other agreements
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.
6.2. Institutional Mandate - data sharing
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).
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).
8.1. Release calendar
The EGR final frame for the reference year T is released at T+15 months.
A Statistics Explained article is published following the release of the EGR final frame as Experimental Statistics by Eurostat on their website.
8.2. Release calendar access
Information on release calendar is communicated to by Eurostat before the start of the cycle.
8.3. Release policy - user access
EGR data are available only to the statistical producers when at least one legal unit of a specific MNE group is located in the territory of Malta.
Data exchanges take place once a year and the EGR final frame is released annually.
10.1. Dissemination format - News release
Not applicable.
10.2. Dissemination format - Publications
Not applicable.
10.3. Dissemination format - online database
Not applicable.
10.4. Dissemination format - microdata access
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 exchanges information on multinational enterprise groups with:
Other Units within NSO.
National Central Bank (NCB)
Other member states when they have at least one legal unit in their country within the group
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 through:
Established procedure of checking data across domains and sources
Sending queries to data providers and taking onboard feedback from users
Manual checks
validation functions within the application used for compilation of the nSBR.
The EGR is validated thoroughly by Eurostat, before and after transmission of data.
11.2. Quality management - assessment
The quality assessment procedure includes checks on data format and logical content of data.
12.1. Relevance - User Needs
The EGR is rountinely used by OFATS, IFATS, NA and BOP for information updates and checks.
12.2. Relevance - User Satisfaction
Eurostat together with the EU Member States conducts SBR user survey addressing users the nSBR and the 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 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.
12.3. Completeness
All available information is passed on to the EGR and is considered to be complete.
13.1. Accuracy - overall
The accuracy of the data transmitted to the EGR is:
Units
Assessment
Legal units
Very good
Relationships between legal units
Good
Enterprises characteristics
Good
Enterprises perimeters
Very Good
Multinational enterprise group
Good
This accuracy assessment is based on:
A negligible amount of duplicates are found in the legal unit population delivered to the EGR-IS.
The number of Legal Unit Identifiers not found.
The timeliness and availability of administrative data sources.
The main issues regarding accuracy of the data and issue importance are as follows:
Units
Issue
Assessment
Legal units
no issue
Relationships between legal units
undercoverage
Full coverage of national relationships.
Due to significant amount of unidentified non-EU enterprises cross-border relationships are not complete.
Enterprises characteristics
estimation
Since the timing of the availability of the administrative data source does not co-incide with the timing of the EGR some enterprise characteristics may need to be estimated.
Enterprise perimeter
no issue
All legal units belonging to a multinational enterprise groups are profiled and included in an enterprise
Multinational enterprise group (with Global decision centre in my country)
Some missing information
Groups perimeter is fully delineated. Administrative sources on group characteristics are not available.
The actions taken to reduce bias (if any) and to improve accuracy of the data are as follows:
All the inconsistency spotted by Eurostat were investigated and corrected if needed
All administrative data updates were included if they arrived before the closure of the EGR cycle data updates.
13.2. Sampling error
Not applicable.
13.3. Non-sampling error
Not applicable.
14.1. Timeliness
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.
14.2. Punctuality
All data is sent within the deadlines stipulated.
15.1. Comparability - geographical
The EGR data is geographically comparable.
15.2. Comparability - over time
Generally, the EGR datasets are comparable over time, with no major break-in-series occuring in any time period. However in 2015, grant-financed work in the compilation of group structures was carried out in the nSBR which significantly improved the links and coverage thereon. The compilation process of the statistical unit 'Enterprise' has also undergone several improvements along the years with the most notable one being in the cycle of 2022 when a more elaborate automatic algorithm was devised for the calculation of the statistical unit enterprise.
15.3. Coherence - cross domain
The nSBR which is the source used to compile the EGR is also the source used for co-ordinated frame populations used across domains thus ensuring coherence.
15.4. Coherence - internal
The nSBR data which is used to compile the EGR is interally coherent.
Not available.
17.1. Data revision - policy
Not applicable
17.2. Data revision - practice
Not applicable
18.1. Source data
The variables of the EGR are populated from data used in the nSBR obtained from the following data sources:
Administrative data sources
Data collected by NSO
18.2. Frequency of data collection
The data which is sent to EGR is collected on annual basis at various stages through the year.
18.3. Data collection
Data sent to EGR are taken from:
the National Statistical business register
administrative data sources.
Profiling
18.4. Data validation
The data collected for the national Statistical Business Register which is used for the compilation of the EGR is validated by:
inbuilt checks within the SBR application
cross checks between the different data sources
feedback from respondents when data is unclear
The files sent to the EGR are pre-validated in Edamis before the official transmission.
18.5. Data compilation
The EGR is compiled in SDMX-CSV format using data in the national statistical business register.
18.6. Adjustment
Not applicable.
No further comments.
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 group population, to derive consistent statistical output with an improved quality in measuring global activities of European enterprises which are part of multinational enterprise groups.
The EGR produces data in yearly cycles and covers microdata on 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.
9 May 2025
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
This refers to all the type of work carried out by the unit, that generates economic revenue. It involves recording a description of all the goods or services produced by the unit. There may be more than one activity.
Number of employees
The number of employees is the number of persons who were for the employer in the unit (excluding working owners).
Number of employees and self-employed persons This is the total number of persons who work in the unit
Net turnover
This is the net sales revenue generated by the unit.
Principal activity
The principal activity of a unit is the activity that generates most value added and is coded using NACE Rev.2 classification.
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 following datasets are transmitted to the EGR during each cycle:
ISRLE file: This dataset consists of the full population of all incorporated resident legal units to be included in the EGR Identification Service.
ISNORLE file: This dataset contains those foreign legal units recorded as either parents or subsidiaries in the National Statistical Business Register that need to be identified in the EGR Identification Service.
LEU file: This dataset contains information on the attributes of all the resident legal units which belong to a multinational enterprise group is sent to be present in the EGR core.
REL file: This dataset contains information on relationships of ownership and control between two legal units is sent to EGR for processing:
two resident legal units
one resident and one foreign legal unit
two foreign legal units.
Relationships in the REL are:
control relationships (>50%)
minority relationships (<50% and >10%)
ENT file: The data set with information on enterprises. This includes information on all the enterprises that are made of the legal units sent in LEU file sent to EGR for processing.
LEL file: The data set with information on links between enterprises and legal units. It includes information about which legal units (LEU) are enterprised (ENT) made of. The links may be one-to-one or one-to-many.
GEG file: The data set with information on enterprise groups of which country is the GDC country for the EuroGroups Register.
This includes groups data sent to the EGR for processing. The groups’ variables which are updated after receiving the preliminary frame are:
The country code of the UCI in cases where on the top of the group there is a natural person or a legal unit whose LEID was not found in the EGR IS (mainly, non-EU & EFTA countries)
The Group's web address
The entire territory of Malta and any other country were affiliates are present.
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 2023 cycle includes data for the 2023 reference year. The identification, economic variables (employment, turnover and economic activity) refer to the 2023 reference year.
The accuracy of the data transmitted to the EGR is:
Units
Assessment
Legal units
Very good
Relationships between legal units
Good
Enterprises characteristics
Good
Enterprises perimeters
Very Good
Multinational enterprise group
Good
This accuracy assessment is based on:
A negligible amount of duplicates are found in the legal unit population delivered to the EGR-IS.
The number of Legal Unit Identifiers not found.
The timeliness and availability of administrative data sources.
The main issues regarding accuracy of the data and issue importance are as follows:
Units
Issue
Assessment
Legal units
no issue
Relationships between legal units
undercoverage
Full coverage of national relationships.
Due to significant amount of unidentified non-EU enterprises cross-border relationships are not complete.
Enterprises characteristics
estimation
Since the timing of the availability of the administrative data source does not co-incide with the timing of the EGR some enterprise characteristics may need to be estimated.
Enterprise perimeter
no issue
All legal units belonging to a multinational enterprise groups are profiled and included in an enterprise
Multinational enterprise group (with Global decision centre in my country)
Some missing information
Groups perimeter is fully delineated. Administrative sources on group characteristics are not available.
The actions taken to reduce bias (if any) and to improve accuracy of the data are as follows:
All the inconsistency spotted by Eurostat were investigated and corrected if needed
All administrative data updates were included if they arrived before the closure of the EGR cycle data updates.
The economic variables on employment are recorded in absolute figures.
The net turnover for enterprises is recorded in nominal values in EURO.
The EGR is compiled in SDMX-CSV format using data in the national statistical business register.
The variables of the EGR are populated from data used in the nSBR obtained from the following data sources:
Administrative data sources
Data collected by NSO
Data exchanges take place once a year and the EGR final frame is released annually.
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.
The EGR data is geographically comparable.
Generally, the EGR datasets are comparable over time, with no major break-in-series occuring in any time period. However in 2015, grant-financed work in the compilation of group structures was carried out in the nSBR which significantly improved the links and coverage thereon. The compilation process of the statistical unit 'Enterprise' has also undergone several improvements along the years with the most notable one being in the cycle of 2022 when a more elaborate automatic algorithm was devised for the calculation of the statistical unit enterprise.
