Opinion of the Committee of the Regions on the "Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the establishment of a common classification of territorial units for statistics (NUTS)"

(2002/C 107/17)

THE COMMITTEE OF THE REGIONS,

having regard to the Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the establishment of a common classification of territorial units for statistics (NUTS) [COM(2001) 83 final - 2001-0046 (COD)];

having regard to the decision of the Council of 12 March 2001 to consult it under Article 265(1) of the Treaty establishing the European Community;

having regard to the decision of its president of 16 May 2001 to instruct Commission 1 (Regional Policy, Structural Funds, Economic and Social Cohesion and Cross-border and Inter-regional Cooperation) to draw up an opinion on the matter;

having regard to its opinion of 15 February 2001 on the structure and goals of European regional policy in the context of enlargement and globalisation: opening of the debate (CdR 157/2000 fin)(1);

having regard to the draft opinion adopted by Commission 1 on 4 October 2001 (CdR 182/2001 rev.) (rapporteur: Mr Martini, President of the Tuscany Region, I-PSE);

whereas

- regional and local authorities responsible for implementing a wide range of Community policies have long been using Eurostat's statistical classifications as a reference for both defining areas for intervention under the Structural Funds, and putting programmes into practice and evaluating their results;

- regional statistics are a cornerstone of the European statistical system; they are used for a wide range of purposes and by a wide range of users. The regional data of the EU Member States are, inter alia, used for allocating structural funds in a rational and consistent way. Hence, regional statistics are the objective statistical base for important political decisions;

- the absence, to date, of a legal benchmark for defining the common classification of territorial units for statistics (NUTS) has introduced uncertainty into the references underpinning programmes, and the recent changes in the NUTS classification in some countries have in some cases generated tensions and misunderstandings;

- the lack so far of criteria setting out in detail the rules for compiling and updating the system have given rise to "gentlemen's agreements" between the Member States and Eurostat, sometimes after long and difficult negotiations and which, in some cases, have not been to the liking of other Member States. Recent changes in the NUTS classification have in fact provoked some tension between the Commission and the national statistical offices concerned;

- these agreements, gradually reached over a period of time, have had the effect of creating areas of marked disparity within the European Union in the way statistics are viewed at the different NUTS levels;

- as the entry of a large number of new Member States to the Union approaches, it would be appropriate to set criteria for defining the reference territorial units (NUTS), in order to define a consistent regional breakdown of territory for statistical purposes including the applicant countries,

adopted the following opinion at its 41st plenary session of 14 and 15 November 2001 (meeting of 15 November).

The Committee of the Regions

1. takes note of the European Commission's initiative in proposing a regulation on a common classification of the territorial units for statistics, and welcomes it as an important step forward towards European integration. This outwardly purely technical aspect in fact has major implications for local and regional government;

2. agrees with the reasons put forward by the Commission and Eurostat for the proposal: regional statistics are the objective statistical base for important political decisions;

3. upholds the principle that existing administrative units within the Member States constitute the first criterion to be used for the definition of regions, and also considers it reasonable that, if for a given level of NUTS no administrative units of a suitable scale exist in a Member State, this NUTS level should be constituted by aggregating an appropriate number of existing smaller administrative units;

4. suggests that parameters other than population, such as surface area, administrative structure or density of population, should also be used as criteria for NUTS definitions;

5. emphasises at any event that in Member States with a federal structure or where the regions possess broad responsibilities and a high level of autonomy, the regions themselves should be considered to have NUTS 1 status, as is the case in Germany and Belgium;

6. expresses its reservations at the political slant the Commission wishes to give to the regulation in fixing the current state of the NUTS breakdown of regions in the Member States as it has developed over the last 20 years, thereby perpetuating the anomaly of widely disparate NUTS situations among the current 15 Member States;

7. harbours serious doubts regarding the definition of the average population thresholds according to which different institutional arrangements are assigned to the various NUTS categories, since these statistical averages rarely bear any resemblance to real circumstances and, in particular, because application of this technical criterion overrides the fundamental principle of institutional autonomy;

8. in this regard, views the Commission's treatment of the present classification for the 15 Member States, compared with its proposals for the applicant countries, to be contradictory. For the applicant countries, NUTS 2 are proposed which are everywhere very similar in size, in keeping with the principles set out in the draft regulation for reliable and homogeneous statistics, while for the present 15 Member States, existing serious anomalies - within individual countries, as well as across the Union - are endorsed;

9. draws attention to the fact that, when forming territorial units, the applicant countries should not focus exclusively on the units' statistical nature and purpose. Territorial units must be formed from democratically governed regions;

10. regrets the failure to take account of the special situation of islands, and - without going so far as to classify small coastal islands as autonomous NUTS territories - proposes more specific statistical and geographic recognition of island regions and of outlying regions which are physically separate from the continent of Europe;

11. strongly calls for the basic level of economic and social organisation in all the present and future EU Member States - the municipality or other appropriate form of local authority - to be included, as NUTS level 5, in the European statistical classification. This would provide basic identifying information for all EU municipalities, bringing European policies into close and practical contact with the general public and the areas they live in; to this end, it might be appropriate to establish NUTS level 4 as an intermediate level encompassing groups of municipalities with similar population characteristics such as population level or density, income, economic activity or level of education;

12. considers that the general approach of the Commission and Eurostat offers a low political profile and its content focuses too narrowly on technical aspects. It therefore proposes that a wide-ranging and in-depth debate on classification be launched among the present Member States, with the full involvement of the European Parliament, which is directly implicated in the codecision procedure, and the national statistical bodies;

13. having also observed the lack of urgency in adopting the regulation, which must be in force when the first new accessions occur, therefore suggests that its members and more generally regional and local authorities and their official statistical bodies throughout the EU, together with the European Parliament, national statistical bodies and the relevant Commission departments, assess whether the current NUTS classification is appropriate to the emerging challenges and demands of EU institutional reform and renewal of Community policies in the run-up to 2006 and beyond.

Brussels, 15 November 2001.

The President

of the Committee of the Regions

Jos Chabert

(1) OJ C 148, 10.5.2000, p. 25.