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.
[4D1_G4] Eurostat - Trade in services; globalisation
1.3. Contact name
Confidential because of GDPR
1.4. Contact person function
Confidential because of GDPR
1.5. Contact mail address
ESTAT-STEC-DATA@ec.europa.eu
1.6. Contact email address
Confidential because of GDPR
1.7. Contact phone number
Confidential because of GDPR
1.8. Contact fax number
Confidential because of GDPR
2.1. Metadata last certified
30 September 2024
2.2. Metadata last posted
24 February 2025
2.3. Metadata last update
23 October 2025
3.1. Data description
Services Trade by Enterprise Characteristics (STEC) statistics offer valuable insights into the types of enterprises involved in international trade in services. They show how businesses in various industries supply and purchase services and how these activities align with their primary economic activity.
STEC data enhance trade statistics by enabling the profiling of enterprises based on key characteristics, such as the number of employees, ownership structure, and economic activity.
These statistics are generated by linking micro-data on international trade in services (ITS) with business register information at the enterprise level. This approach creates a dataset that categorizes the trading population into small, medium, and large enterprises, as well as domestic and foreign-owned entities, and further segments data by economic activity. The data is currently broken down by trading partner location, including Intra-EU, Extra-EU, and World.
For more details on the concepts and definitions see section "3.4. Statistical concepts and definitions".
3.3. Coverage - sector
STEC covers total exports / imports of services, traded between residents and non-residents and NACE Rev.2 sections A to U.
3.4. Statistical concepts and definitions
The statistical concepts used in STEC are defined in the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197.
Services are the outcome of production activities that alter the conditions of the consuming units or facilitate the exchange of products or financial assets. Unlike tangible goods, services cannot typically be separated from their production process, nor can ownership rights be established over them. Exports and imports of services refer to the exchange of services between residents and non-residents, with their value determined at market prices.
In the STEC datasets the exports and imports of services are broken down by:
Geographical breakdown, which is the country or area where the counterpart unit is resident;
A+B - Agriculture, forestry, and fishing; mining and quarrying,
D+E - Electricity, gas, steam, and air conditioning supply; water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities,
I+L+O+P+Q+R+S+T+U - Accommodation and food service activities; real estate activities; public administration, defence; compulsory social security; education; human health and social work activities; other services.
NACE Sections:
C - Manufacturing,
F - Construction,
G - Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles,
H - Transportation and storage,
J - Information and communication,
K - Financial and insurance activities,
M - Professional, scientific, and technical activities,
N - Administrative and support service activities.
Size class, which is the size class (in terms of number of employees and self-employed persons) to which the resident trading enterprise belongs;
1. Manufacturing services on physical inputs owned by others
2. Maintenance and repair services n.i.e.
3. Transport
4. Travel
5. Construction
6. Insurance and pension services
7. Financial services
8. Charges for the use of intellectual property n.i.e.
9. Telecommunications, computer, and information services
10. Other business services
10.1. Research and development services
10.2. Professional and management consulting services
10.3. Technical, trade-related, and other business services
11. Personal, cultural and recreational services
12. Government goods and services, n.i.e.
Type of control, which distinguishes between domestically-controlled enterprises (ultimately controlled by a resident unit) and foreign-controlled enterprises (enterprises resident in the compiling country over which an ultimate controlling institutional unit not resident in the compiling country has control). Control means the ability to determine the general policy of an enterprise, for example by choosing appropriate directors, if necessary.
3.5. Statistical unit
STEC use the enterprise as a statistical unit.
The definition of an enterprise is provided by the Statistical Unit Regulation 1993 (Council Regulation (EEC) No 696 / 93) as follows: The enterprise is the smallest combination of legal units that is an organisational 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.
3.6. Statistical population
STEC data link the total exports and imports of services between residents and non-residents.
The activity breakdown covers NACE sections from A to U.
The product breakdown covers EBOPS 2010 main items.
3.7. Reference area
The data generally cover the European Union, the EU Member States, Iceland and Norway.
The data are transmitted to Eurostat T+18 months after the end of the reference period.
Thus the EU aggregates are available for reference year 2022 and onwards.
On voluntary basis, some countries have reported data for earlier years. These data are also disseminated on Eurostat reference database.
3.9. Base period
Not applicable
The data transmitted to Eurostat are in Thousands of Euro for Euro Area countries and in Thousands of National currency for non-Euro Area countries. The unit of dissemination is Euro.
Calendar year.
6.1. Institutional Mandate - legal acts and other agreements
Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 on European business statistics sets the data requirements in the field of services trade by enterprise characteristics for the EU Member States and EFTA countries. The exact technical specifications are listed in Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197 (table 17 "Country-level business statistics on trade in services by enterprise characteristics (STEC) – annual data"). The variables must be reported annually (first reference year 2022).
6.2. Institutional Mandate - data sharing
Not applicable
7.1. Confidentiality - policy
Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4)) of 11 March 2009 (OJ L 87, p. 164), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.
Eurostat publishes national data that are delivered according to a legal act and are not considered to be of truly confidential nature (Article 20 of Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 March 2009). The Member States are obliged to ensure a sufficient degree of representativeness of data (EBS Regulation, Article 10). The main reasons not to publish data are:
Confidentiality - if data are of truly confidential nature according to the above mentioned regulation (data which allow statistical units to be identified, either directly or indirectly), they have to be flagged confidential, and they will not be published by Eurostat.
Quality issues
Some data are good enough for European aggregates, but not reliable on a national level – If data are not reliable at a national level, but are considered to be a reliable input for a European aggregate, the national data can be marked as “not for publication” and will not be published by Eurostat. In this case an informal agreement is needed between Eurostat and the NSA if there is no other agreement. Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197 defines the maximum number of cells that can be marked as 'not for publication', according to the relative contribution of each country to the European aggrgate.
The main users of STEC data are the European Commission policy directorate generals (EC DGs), scientists, businesses and citizens. The data users are regularly consulted to identify unfulfilled user needs.
12.2. Relevance - User Satisfaction
An indicator of the usefulness of STEC is the number of downloads of STEC tables from the Eurostat website and the page views of the dedicated web section.
The number of downloads will be updated in due time.
On a voluntary basis, some countries have reported data for earlier reference years. These data are also disseminated on the Eurostat reference database.
For the period 2013–2019, several countries — Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Hungary, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Finland, Sweden, and Iceland — collected STEC data on a voluntary basis as experimental statistics. These data collections were financed by the European Commission under grant agreements and were initially published as experimental statistics.
The Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 gives the data providers the freedom to choose data sources. In most countries a combination of survey, already available international trade in services (ITS) data and data from the business registers is used.
The STEC data are obtained by microdata linking of the traditional ITS data and the data from the business redisters.
STEC data transmitted by the countries are checked for their consistency and plausibility.
Before each data transmission to Eurostat, national compilers must conduct plausibility checks and ensure accounting integrity of the data sets. Eurostat made automated validation services available, which are integrated directly into the data transmission workflow, accessible on the EDAMIS Web Portal. In practice, national compilers use the validation services in two different scenarios:
pre-validation of data sets by the national compilers without their actual delivery (official transmission). Pre-validation service available for national compilers with quick feedback allows potential issues in the data sets to be identified and allows the data compilers to correct such issues before the official transmission takes place.
automated validation of the official transmissions from the national compilers. Each incoming transmission is automatically validated and the sender receives validation reports, informing about the result of the validation. If the data set is rejected by one of the validation services (STRUVAL or CONVAL), the sender needs to correct it and resubmit it. An incoming data set is validated in two steps by two distinct services:
STRUVAL (Structural Validation) carries out structural validation of statistical data sets in SDMX-CSV file format based on structural information stored in a data structure definition (DSD) document for a given data flow. The STRUVAL service:
verifies that the SDMX-CSV file (the data set) is a well-formulated CSV document and its structural elements are correctly ordered and nested;
detects misplaced, undefined and missing dimensions and attributes at the data set, groups, series, and observation levels;
detects invalid codes based on the pre-defined code lists and the data flow constraints;
detects invalid data format and invalid values for time-period concepts; and
detects duplicated observations.
CONVAL (Content Validation) carried out content validation of a file with a statistical data set, based on pre-defined set of validation rules. The CONVAL service covers:
basic logical checks (REF_AREA = sender country code, consistency of the observation value with the observation and confidentiality status flags);
basic content checks (missing series, doubtful negative values); and
general plausibility and consistency within the file (check of identities representing integrity rules).
Validations by STRUVAL and CONVAL are carried out automatically on each data transmission.
Validation services send automated notifications to the sender via email with validation results.
13.2. Sampling error
Not applicable.
13.2.1. Sampling error - indicators
Not applicable.
13.3. Non-sampling error
Not applicable.
13.3.1. Coverage error
Not applicable.
13.3.1.1. Over-coverage - rate
Not applicable.
13.3.1.2. Common units - proportion
Not applicable.
13.3.2. Measurement error
Not applicable.
13.3.3. Non response error
Not applicable.
13.3.3.1. Unit non-response - rate
Not applicable.
13.3.3.2. Item non-response - rate
Not applicable.
13.3.4. Processing error
Not applicable.
13.3.5. Model assumption error
Not applicable.
14.1. Timeliness
Annual STEC data are reported 18 months after the end of the reference period.
14.1.1. Time lag - first result
Not applicable.
14.1.2. Time lag - final result
Not applicable.
14.2. Punctuality
Final data ought to be transmitted to Eurostat 18 months after the end of the reference period.
15.1.1. Asymmetry for mirror flow statistics - coefficient
Not applicable.
15.2. Comparability - over time
To assess the inter-temporal comparability of STEC data, it must be investigated whether the same concepts and methods were applied. In case data are not comparable there might be a break in time series.
The source data are generally considered highly comparable over time.
Coherence with the annual ITS data and the business registers is required.
Eurostat checks that the STEC main items are consistent with ITS items.
It should be noted that due to the usual revisions (that may occur right after the submission of one domain to the other domain), the data may not always agree.
15.3.1. Coherence - sub annual and annual statistics
Not applicable.
15.3.2. Coherence - National Accounts
Not applicable.
15.4. Coherence - internal
The internal consistency of the data (links between variables, coherence between data series,...) are checked by Eurostat before dissemination.
Please mind that the Member States may revise their figures between Eurostat releases.
Article 4 of the Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 stipulates that, in producing European statistics, Member States may use any relevant data sources while avoiding excessive burden on respondents and taking due account of the cost-effectiveness of the national statistical authority. Furthermore, Article 5 states that the national statistical authorities shall have the right to access and use, promptly and free of charge, all administrative records, and to integrate those records with other data sources, so as to meet the statistical requirements of the Regulation (EU) 2019/2152. Both articles are central as they set the basis for supporting cost-effectiveness and reducing unnecessary burden on respondents. STEC is a statistical domain that has a relatively low response burden. It is an annual data collection, and the breakdowns are obtained by microdata linking of existing data sets and business registers. Linking different data sets adds value to data, without increasing the collection burden on enterprises and has limited costs to data compilers.
The International Trade in Services Statistics Working Group (ITSS WG) agreed on this STEC revision policy during its regular meeting on 8–9 April 2025 (relevant documents are available on CIRCABC). The recommendation is that countries revise data for the previous reference year—and, under normal circumstances, for up to two years prior—particularly when significant revisions have occurred in the ITS domain.
STEC figures are derived from the ITS totals. These ITS totals are initially transmitted nine months after the end of the reference period, during the annual ITSS data collection. Each year, the data are revised based on updated information provided by countries.
Revisions to STEC data are likely to be influenced by any updates made to the underlying source data, which generally include ITS and business register data.
Following a revision of the ITS totals for a given reference year, STEC totals should also be revised—ideally during the next STEC data transmission cycle.
Further details on ITS revisions can be found in the reference metadata file and in section 4.1 of the BoP Vademecum (at the time of drafting this text as of 2024), "Timetable and revision policy."
17.2. Data revision - practice
After the official data transmissions (deadline T+18 months) Eurostat validates and publishes the annual STEC data, together with revisions for previous years (if any).
All reported errors (once validated) result in corrections of the disseminated data. Reported errors are corrected in the disseminated data as soon as the correct data have been validated.
Data may be published even if they are missing for certain countries (in these cases Eurostat estimates the missing data) or flagged as provisional or of low reliability for certain countries. They are replaced with final data with the publication of next reference period. European aggregates are updated accordingly for consistency with new country data.
Whenever new data are provided and validated, the already disseminated data are updated during the next regular production cycle. The EU aggregates are revised in view of such ‘spontaneous’ updates.
17.2.1. Data revision - average size
Not applicable.
18.1. Source data
Every year the national statistical authorities of the Member States provide Eurostat with data according to a defined requierements stipulated in the respective legal acts.
The data are estimated mostly by microdata linking, some countries use data coming from different surveys and administrative sources. Methods used for the collection and compilation of these statistics differ among countries.
STEC data are produced by combining statistical business register information with data on international trade in services at enterprise level. This allows to link data on the value of each enterprise’s exports and imports to its characteristics, as provided in the business register.
The resulting dataset provides a breakdown of the trader population according to size of the enterprise (small, medium and large), type of ownership and category of main economic activity.
Linking different datasets adds value to data, without increasing the collection burden on enterprises and has limited costs to data compilers.
18.4. Data validation
At Eurostat level, all data undergo validation before publication. Eurostat performs a series of checks on the data received from reporting countries, including:
Plausibility checks – verifying the reasonableness of the data (for example, assessing the development and continuity of time series);
Internal consistency checks – ensuring that aggregates correspond to the sum of their components;
Cross-domain consistency checks – confirming that STEC totals are consistent with the corresponding ITS totals;
Comparability checks – verifying that the data are in line with figures already disseminated by the same country on a national level.
18.5. Data compilation
As STEC is a multisource statistic, its data compilation depends on the compilation processes of the various underlying sources, such as ITSS, national statistical business registers, administrative data, and other relevant sources.
Eurostat compiles aggregate EU figures by consolidating the transactions reported by EU Member States. The EU aggregate is available from the reference year 2022 onwards, for items that are mandatory under Commission Regulation 2019/2152.
Further details on the compilation of ITSS aggregates can be found in the ITSS metadata under point 18.5.
18.5.1. Imputation - rate
Not applicable.
18.6. Adjustment
Monetary values reported by the different countries are converted and/or rounded to thousands of euros.
18.6.1. Seasonal adjustment
Not applicable
Not applicable.
Services Trade by Enterprise Characteristics (STEC) statistics offer valuable insights into the types of enterprises involved in international trade in services. They show how businesses in various industries supply and purchase services and how these activities align with their primary economic activity.
STEC data enhance trade statistics by enabling the profiling of enterprises based on key characteristics, such as the number of employees, ownership structure, and economic activity.
These statistics are generated by linking micro-data on international trade in services (ITS) with business register information at the enterprise level. This approach creates a dataset that categorizes the trading population into small, medium, and large enterprises, as well as domestic and foreign-owned entities, and further segments data by economic activity. The data is currently broken down by trading partner location, including Intra-EU, Extra-EU, and World.
The first reference year for data reporting under the above regulations is 2022.
23 October 2025
The statistical concepts used in STEC are defined in the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2020/1197.
Services are the outcome of production activities that alter the conditions of the consuming units or facilitate the exchange of products or financial assets. Unlike tangible goods, services cannot typically be separated from their production process, nor can ownership rights be established over them. Exports and imports of services refer to the exchange of services between residents and non-residents, with their value determined at market prices.
In the STEC datasets the exports and imports of services are broken down by:
Geographical breakdown, which is the country or area where the counterpart unit is resident;
A+B - Agriculture, forestry, and fishing; mining and quarrying,
D+E - Electricity, gas, steam, and air conditioning supply; water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities,
I+L+O+P+Q+R+S+T+U - Accommodation and food service activities; real estate activities; public administration, defence; compulsory social security; education; human health and social work activities; other services.
NACE Sections:
C - Manufacturing,
F - Construction,
G - Wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles,
H - Transportation and storage,
J - Information and communication,
K - Financial and insurance activities,
M - Professional, scientific, and technical activities,
N - Administrative and support service activities.
Size class, which is the size class (in terms of number of employees and self-employed persons) to which the resident trading enterprise belongs;
1. Manufacturing services on physical inputs owned by others
2. Maintenance and repair services n.i.e.
3. Transport
4. Travel
5. Construction
6. Insurance and pension services
7. Financial services
8. Charges for the use of intellectual property n.i.e.
9. Telecommunications, computer, and information services
10. Other business services
10.1. Research and development services
10.2. Professional and management consulting services
10.3. Technical, trade-related, and other business services
11. Personal, cultural and recreational services
12. Government goods and services, n.i.e.
Type of control, which distinguishes between domestically-controlled enterprises (ultimately controlled by a resident unit) and foreign-controlled enterprises (enterprises resident in the compiling country over which an ultimate controlling institutional unit not resident in the compiling country has control). Control means the ability to determine the general policy of an enterprise, for example by choosing appropriate directors, if necessary.
STEC use the enterprise as a statistical unit.
The definition of an enterprise is provided by the Statistical Unit Regulation 1993 (Council Regulation (EEC) No 696 / 93) as follows: The enterprise is the smallest combination of legal units that is an organisational 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.
STEC data link the total exports and imports of services between residents and non-residents.
The activity breakdown covers NACE sections from A to U.
The product breakdown covers EBOPS 2010 main items.
The data generally cover the European Union, the EU Member States, Iceland and Norway.
Calendar year.
The Regulation (EU) 2019/2152 gives the data providers the freedom to choose data sources. In most countries a combination of survey, already available international trade in services (ITS) data and data from the business registers is used.
The STEC data are obtained by microdata linking of the traditional ITS data and the data from the business redisters.
STEC data transmitted by the countries are checked for their consistency and plausibility.
Before each data transmission to Eurostat, national compilers must conduct plausibility checks and ensure accounting integrity of the data sets. Eurostat made automated validation services available, which are integrated directly into the data transmission workflow, accessible on the EDAMIS Web Portal. In practice, national compilers use the validation services in two different scenarios:
pre-validation of data sets by the national compilers without their actual delivery (official transmission). Pre-validation service available for national compilers with quick feedback allows potential issues in the data sets to be identified and allows the data compilers to correct such issues before the official transmission takes place.
automated validation of the official transmissions from the national compilers. Each incoming transmission is automatically validated and the sender receives validation reports, informing about the result of the validation. If the data set is rejected by one of the validation services (STRUVAL or CONVAL), the sender needs to correct it and resubmit it. An incoming data set is validated in two steps by two distinct services:
STRUVAL (Structural Validation) carries out structural validation of statistical data sets in SDMX-CSV file format based on structural information stored in a data structure definition (DSD) document for a given data flow. The STRUVAL service:
verifies that the SDMX-CSV file (the data set) is a well-formulated CSV document and its structural elements are correctly ordered and nested;
detects misplaced, undefined and missing dimensions and attributes at the data set, groups, series, and observation levels;
detects invalid codes based on the pre-defined code lists and the data flow constraints;
detects invalid data format and invalid values for time-period concepts; and
detects duplicated observations.
CONVAL (Content Validation) carried out content validation of a file with a statistical data set, based on pre-defined set of validation rules. The CONVAL service covers:
basic logical checks (REF_AREA = sender country code, consistency of the observation value with the observation and confidentiality status flags);
basic content checks (missing series, doubtful negative values); and
general plausibility and consistency within the file (check of identities representing integrity rules).
Validations by STRUVAL and CONVAL are carried out automatically on each data transmission.
Validation services send automated notifications to the sender via email with validation results.
The data transmitted to Eurostat are in Thousands of Euro for Euro Area countries and in Thousands of National currency for non-Euro Area countries. The unit of dissemination is Euro.
As STEC is a multisource statistic, its data compilation depends on the compilation processes of the various underlying sources, such as ITSS, national statistical business registers, administrative data, and other relevant sources.
Eurostat compiles aggregate EU figures by consolidating the transactions reported by EU Member States. The EU aggregate is available from the reference year 2022 onwards, for items that are mandatory under Commission Regulation 2019/2152.
Further details on the compilation of ITSS aggregates can be found in the ITSS metadata under point 18.5.
Every year the national statistical authorities of the Member States provide Eurostat with data according to a defined requierements stipulated in the respective legal acts.
The data are estimated mostly by microdata linking, some countries use data coming from different surveys and administrative sources. Methods used for the collection and compilation of these statistics differ among countries.
To assess the inter-temporal comparability of STEC data, it must be investigated whether the same concepts and methods were applied. In case data are not comparable there might be a break in time series.
The source data are generally considered highly comparable over time.
