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

Production cycles of the EGR

The EGR produces yearly data. The EGR frames for reference year T are available for users at T + 15 months. The first reference year of EGR was 2008, since that a frame was produced for all reference years

For 2008 the EGR system produced data on 6350 multinational enterprise groups. For reference year 2009 the second EGR cycle processed data on more than 8 thousand groups. The 2010 and 2011 EGR cycles produced data on more than 10 thousand multinational enterprise groups. These four EGR cycles were implemented with version 1.0 of the EGR system. The EGR 1.0 process was based on commercial data, these data were validated with national data.

Developments of the EGR 2.0 system started in 2012, the new process was fully launched in 2015. The switch to EGR 2.0 improved the EGR process, with the new IT system currently EGR is collecting NSI data and improving them with commercial data. EGR 2.0 is targeting to cover all relevant multinational enterprise groups acting in Europe. For the last reference year, for 2014 EGR produced a final picture on 61 thousand multinational enterprise groups covering 781 thousand legal units.

Data

The following units of a multinational enterprise groups 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. EGR data serve national statistical institutes and national central banks to compile statistics and are not 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.

Information system

EGR version 2.0 offers on-line applications for users with remote access. With the EGR applications users can identify legal units, browse and improve the EGR data. Users and producers benefit from the following EGR applications:

EGR identification service - application supporting the EGR producers in identifying legal units.
EGR CORE application - the heart of EGR system, it stores, transforms and consolidates input data of different sources and generates the EGR frames.
EGR interactive module - interactive web interface to browse and validate data in the consolidation area of EGR.
EGR FATS online interface - application providing users with a foreign affiliates statistics (FATS)oriented web interface to browse and download EGR data.

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