Archive:Eurostat yearbook
Latest update of text: June 2014. Planned article update: June 2015.
Europe in figures - Eurostat yearbook provides users of official statistics with an overview of the wealth of information that is available on Eurostat’s website and within its online databases. It belongs to a set of general compendium publications and, of these, it provides the most extensive set of analyses and detailed data. The Eurostat yearbook has been conceived as a rollingly updated online-only publication that provides a balanced set of indicators, with a broad cross-section of information, covering all of the main areas in which official European statistics are available. The complete publication is available in English, German and French and a selection of around a fifth of its content in 18 additional languages.
Structure
The Eurostat yearbook is divided into a general introduction and 13 main chapters (for example ‘Population’) each of them consisting of a chapter-specific introductory article and two to nine main articles (for example ‘Marriage and divorce statistics’). In each main article after a brief introduction comes the core formed by commentary on the main statistical findings on the data presented is a set of tables, figures and occasionl maps that have been selected to illustrate the wide variety of data available for that particular topic; often these include information on how important benchmark indicators have developed during recent years within the European Union (EU), the euro area (EA) and the EU Member States. Therafter the data sources, collection methods and/or availability are presented. In addition all articles present more general background information, for example on the EU policy context, and links to further information available in Eurostat and elsewhere (for example other European Commission Directorates-General, UN and OECD).
Coverage
Spatial data coverage
The Eurostat yearbook usually presents information for the EU-28 (the 28 Member States of the EU), the euro area (based on 18 members), as well as the individual EU Member States. The order of the Member States used in the yearbook generally follows their order of protocol; in other words, the alphabetical order of the countries’ names in their respective original languages. In some of the figures the data are ranked according to the values of a particular indicator.
The EU-28 and euro area aggregates are normally only provided when information for all of the Member States is available, or if an estimate has been made for missing information. Any incomplete totals that are created are systematically footnoted. Time series for these geographical aggregates are based on a consistent set of countries for the whole of the time period (unless otherwise indicated). In other words, although the EU only had 25 Member States since early 2004, 27 Member States since the start of 2007 and 28 Member States since the middle of 2013, the time series for the EU-28 refer to a sum or an average for all 28 Member States for the whole of the period presented, as if all 28 Member States had been part of the EU in earlier periods. In a similar vein, the data for the euro area are consistently presented for the 18 members (as of January 2014), despite the later accessions of Greece, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta, Slovakia, Estonia and most recently Latvia, to the euro area. Unless otherwise stated, the data for the euro area covers the 18 Member States that shared the euro as a common currency as of January 2014 (Belgium, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovakia and Finland).
When available, information is also presented for EFTA countries, the candidate countries, namely, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia[1], Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey, as well as for Japan and the United States. In the event that data for any of these non-member countries are not available then these have been excluded from tables and figures; however, the full set of 28 EU Member States is maintained in tables, with footnotes being added in figures for those EU Member States for which information is missing.
Temporal data coverage
In addition to presenting the data for the latest year (or reference period) available, the Eurostat yearbook often presents earlier year(s) in the tables and figures. This may be: one or two additional years, for example 2010 and 2011 to be compared with data for 2012; a snapshot comparing with five and/or 10 years earlier, for example 2002 and 2007 to be compared with 2012; or a full time series covering the 10 years leading up to the latest reference period, for example, from 2002 through to 2012. The interval between the years presented in tables and figures is often restricted to five or 10 year comparisons in order to highlight slower, structural changes.
If data for a reference period are not available for a particular country, then efforts have been made to fill tables and figures with data for previous reference periods (these exceptions are footnoted); generally, an effort has been made to go back at least two reference periods, for example showing data for 2010 or 2011 for those countries (or geographical aggregates) for which 2012 data are not yet available.
Rolling updating
Update timing
Most of the around 85 articles are updated once a year after new, mainly annual, data have been released. As different sources release new data in different times of the year, the updates of the articles of the Eurostat yearbook get published rollingly througout the year. The time of the current version (for example ‘Data from May 2014’) and planned update publication (for example ‘Planned article update: June 2015’) are indicated in the beginning of each article. For some articles (for example Government finance statistics) significant new data is released twice a year and they are updated twice a year, whereas for exaple for the article Innovation statistics new data is released every two years and it can thus be updated only biennally. The original update is done in the English version of the article. When this update is completed the updated English version is sent to translation, see ‘Languge versions’ underneath.
Data freshness
At the time of updating
At the time of updating an article the freshest data available is used. It is to be noted that the latest reference period available, for example year, varies across the different sources, which is due to the following: The collection, processing and subsequent release of data to the public is a complex process that results in a certain amount of time elapsing; this can vary from a few weeks in the case of short-term monthly indicators to several years for complex, ad-hoc surveys.
After updating
After an article has been updated some updates to its data may become available. Some data sources of an article may in addition release for example an additional your's data several months before the article is updated again, which due to resource constraints will take place only when all the essential data sources of the article have released an additional year's data. (An article may have several data sources which release an additional year's data in different times — the additional year may also be different in different sources within one article.) Therefore the longer time has elapsed from the extraction of the data for an article, the bigger proportion of its sources are likely to have fresher data available. Some links may also get broken after the update.
How to get the freshest data?
1. There are links to the relevant Eurostat main tables and database topics in the end of an article.
2. It is possible to access the latest version of each data set through the online data codes that are provided as part of the source under each table, figure and map. These data codes lead to a common standard view of the data set, which isn't necessarily the one used for the tables, figures and maps of the article. In order to get the view used in the article one may have to adjust the variables of the data extraction. A description of the use of the data codes is given in the article titled ‘Accessing European statistics’/‘Access to data’/‘Eurostat online data codes — easy access to the freshest data’.
3. The MS Excel file containing all of the tables, figures and occasional maps shown in a Eurostat yearbook article is available towards the end of the article under the title ‘Source data for tables and figures (MS Excel)’. In the last lines of each shet there are long bookmarks to the specific, tailor-made extractions that were used to create each table, figure or map.
Future data releases
There is a release calendar, which provides details of the schedule for releasing euro-indicators (a collection of important monthly and quarterly indicators), available at: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/lang-en/release_calendars/news_releases. For other data sets, the metadata provided on Eurostat’s website gives information relating to the frequency of surveys and the time that may elapse before fresher data are published/released.
-freshest data¨: data codes, bookmarks within the Excel file
- timeliness improvement when rolling - historical meaning , concept obsolete (neither an annula publication nor a traditional printed book),
Language versions, MS Excel files and previous editions
Language versions
The Eurostat yearbook is available in English, German and French on Statistics Explained (part of Eurostat’s website) as an online publication, the online-only Eurostat yearbook. Its core content consists of around 70 main statistical articles and 17 introductory articles — four general ones and 13 sectoral introductions. Each article is updated As such, the online German and French yearbooks are not always as up-to-date as the English version. The three language versions of the online Eurostat yearbook are accessible through the short URLs: http://bit.ly/Eurostat_yearbook, http://bit.ly/Eurostat-Jahrbuch, and http://bit.ly/Annuaire_Eurostat. In addition, a selection of 17 main statistical articles from the Eurostat yearbook are available in Statistics Explained in 18 additional languages (besides German, English and French): Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Greek, Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovenian and Swedish. The Croatian translations will not be available before autumn 2014.
MS Excel files
The MS Excel file containing all of the tables, figures and occasional maps shown in a Eurostat yearbook article are available towards the end of the article under the title ‘Source data for tables and figures (MS Excel)’.
Previous editions
Since the 2013 edition, the Eurostat yearbook has no longer been released as a PDF file or as a printed book. The last English edition available as a PDF file or in printed form is the 2012 edition. All previous editions (from 1996 through to 2012) are available as PDF files from http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/lang-en/publications/eurostat_yearbook1/previous_editions.
Data presentation
Eurostat online databases contain a large amount of metadata that provide information on the status of particular values or data series. In order to improve readability, only the most significant information has been included in the tables and figures. The following symbols are used, where necessary:
Italic data value is forecasted, provisional or estimated and is likely to change;
: not available, confidential or unreliable value;
– not applicable.
Breaks in series are indicated in the footnotes provided under each table and figure.
Related Eurostat publications
Key figures on Europe pocketbook
The pocketbook Key figures on Europe (2013 edition) is derived from the Eurostat yearbook and presents the core content of the yearbook. It is available in German, English and French both as a PDF file and as a printed edition.
Eurostat regional yearbook
The Eurostat yearbook's sister publication, the Eurostat regional yearbook (2013 edition published in October 2013) supplements the information provided for the EU-28 and the Member States in the Eurostat yearbook by providing data at a sub-national level to give an overview of key statistics that are available for the regions of Europe. Eurostat’s regional yearbook is published on paper, as a PDF and on Statistics Explained. The three language versions of the virtual Eurostat regional yearbook are accessible through the short URLs: http://bit.ly/Eurostat_regional_yearbook, http://bit.ly/Eurostat_Jahrbuch_der_Regionen, and http://bit.ly/Annuaire_regional_Eurostat.
The EU in the world
The publication The EU in the world (2013 edition published in November 2012) supplements the information provided in the Eurostat yearbook by a selection of important and interesting statistics on the EU — considered as a single entity — in comparison with the 15 non-EU countries from the Group of Twenty (G20). The publication is available on Statistics Explained as an online publication, the online EU in the world.
Notes
- ↑ The name of the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia is shown in tables and figures in this publication as FYR of Macedonia — this does not prejudge in any way the definitive nomenclature for this country, which is to be agreed following the conclusion of negotiations currently taking place on this subject at the United Nations.