Archive:EuroGroups register

With the EuroGroups Register (EGR) project, Eurostat is currently creating a network of business registers used for statistical purposes in European Union (EU) Member States, focused on multinational enterprise groups.

A multinational enterprise group (MNE) is defined as an enterprise group composed of at least two enterprises or legal units located in different countries.

In order to create the EuroGroups Register, Eurostat collects enterprise group information from the national statistical business registers of the EU Member States and participating EFTA countries and commercial sources.

After the consolidation and validation process the register contains the global structure of the multinational enterprise groups. National register staff and statistics compilers receive access to all units of the multinational enterprise groups, if at least one unit of the group is located in their national territory. These populations can be used for survey frames at national level.

The necessary data exchange between the national business registers and Eurostat is defined in Article 11 of the business registers Regulation 177/2008 and implemented through two regulations on exchange of confidential data.

To facilitate the identification of statistical entities (i.e. the enterprises) of large and complex multinational enterprise groups, a project was launched with the aim to develop a common method for 'profiling'.

Main findings

Development of the EuroGroups Register

The 2008 EGR cycle was carried out in 2009 and produced data for 6350 multinational enterprise groups.
The second EGR cycle processed data for reference year 2009 and was carried out in 2010 and extended the coverage to 8185 multinational enterprise groups.
The 2010 and 2011 EGR cycles were implemented respectively in 2011 and 2012 and produced data for more than 10 thousand multinational enterprise groups.
From 2013 onwards EGR is developed in the direction that it will be able to cover all relevant multinational enterprise groups acting in Europe.

Data

The following units of a multinational enterprise group and their characteristics are in the EuroGroups Register:

legal units: identity, demographic, control and ownership characteristics;
enterprises: identity and demographic characteristics, activity code (NACE), number of persons employed, turnover, institutional sector;
enterprise groups: identity, demographic characteristics, the structure of the group, the group head, the country of global decision centre, activity code (NACE), consolidated employment and turnover of the group.

The EGR is foreseen to become the platform that supports the production of micro based statistics on globalisation in Europe. The data will serve national statistical institutes and national central banks to compile statistics and will not be disseminated by Eurostat to the public.

The EGR should serve as a unique survey frame for these and other statistics and thereby form the basic tool for improving these statistics, while also reducing the reporting burden.

Context

The fragmented picture, the EU Member States currently have of multinational enterprise groups operating in the European market, is causing increasing harmonisation problems for several statistics affected by globalisation (including foreign affiliates statistics (FATS), foreign direct investment and external trade).

The development of the EGR was part of the programme for modernisation of European enterprise and trade statistics (MEETS).

Further Eurostat information

Publications

Business registers - Recommendations manual

Dedicated section

Structural business statistics

Methodology / Metadata

Methodology on enterprise groups and registers is available in the business registers recommendations manual.

Other information

Regulation 696/1993 of 15 March 1993 on the statistical units for the observation and analysis of the production system in the Community
Regulation 177/2008 of 20 February 2008 establishing a common framework for business registers for statistical purposes and repealing Regulation 2186/93
Regulation 192/2009 of 11 March 2009 implementing Regulation 177/2008 establishing a common framework for business registers for statistical purposes, as regards the exchange of confidential data between the Commission (Eurostat) and Member States
Regulation 1097/2010 of 26 November 2010 implementing Regulation 177/2008 establishing a common framework for business registers for statistical purposes, as regards the exchange of confidential data between the Commission (Eurostat) and central banks