Foreign Affiliates Statistics (FATS) Recommendations Manual - Products Manuals and Guidelines

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Please consult the latest edition, which also provides an access to all previous editions.

The Regulation (EC) No 716/2007 of the European Parliament and the Council (EC) on the structure and activity of foreign affiliates as the regulatory framework for the provision of foreign affiliates statistics (FATS) was adopted in 2007. The main objective of Regulation (EC) No 716/2007 is to establish a common framework and statistical quality standards for the systematic production of comparable statistics on foreign affiliates.

Article 2 of the FATS Regulation provides definitions of the statistics on foreign affiliates where Inward statistics on foreign affiliates (Inward FATS) shall mean statistics describing the activity of foreign affiliates resident in the compiling economy and Outward statistics on foreign affiliates (Outward FATS) shall mean statistics describing the activity of foreign affiliates abroad controlled by the compiling economy.

The Eurostat FATS Recommendations Manual, as called for in article 7 of the regulation, plays a crucial role in the compilation process. It provides the definitions and guidelines for national compilers which are the indispensable precondition for obtaining FATS which can be added together to produce meaningful EU-wide aggregates. To make sure that the manual is not only in line with the rules in the FATS Regulation but also meets the needs and realities national compilers face in practice, it has been thoroughly discussed in various meetings of the FATS joint working group.

This third edition of the manual is derived from the second one published in September 2009 and replaces it.