The 'GISCO NUTS 2021' data set represents the NUTS 2021 regulation and statistical regions by means of multipart polygon, polyline and point topology. The NUTS geographical information is completed by attribute tables and a set of cartographic help lines to better visualize multipart polygonal regions.

The NUTS nomenclature is a hierarchical classification of statistical regions defined by Eurostat. The NUTS classification subdivides the EU economic territory into 3 statistical levels. The NUTS 2021 classification has been established through the Commission Delegated Regulation 2019/1755, which entered into force on 8th August 2019 and applies from 1st January 2021. A non official NUTS-like classification has been defined for the EFTA countries and the candidate countries.

At present, six scale ranges (100K, 1M, 3M, 10M and 20M, 60M) are maintained in the GISCO geodatabase. The polygon and boundary classes delineate the regions, while the points provide an anchor for each region. Associated tables contain basic information such as the name of the region. The public data set will be available at 1M, 3M, 10M, 20M, 60M, while the full data set at 100K is restricted.

The data set covers EU Member States, EFTA countries, EU candidate countries and the UK. Following the departure of the UK from the European Union, the UK is no longer flagged as an EU Member State but retains its place in the NUTS and statistical regions data set.

This metadata only refers to the full NUTS2021 dataset (polygons) at 100k (NUTS_RG_100K_2021), which is derived from the EuroBoundary Map 2020 (EBM2020) from Eurogeographics as well as GISCO NUTS 2016 (from Türkiye). With the dataset it is also provided the table NUTS_AT_2021.dbf and an excel file NUTS2016-NUTS2021.xlsx with the list of changes between 2016 and 2021.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Additional information, including the conditions of use and acknowledgement notice is included in the document provided with the dataset "GISCO NUTS 2021 Additional Information.pdf". Public access to this data set is restricted due to intellectual property rights. It shall only be used internally by the EEA, its ETCs and subcontractors working on behalf of the EEA. This metadata has been slightly adapted from the original metadata information provided by Eurostat (European Commission) and is to be used only for internal EEA purposes.

An introduction to the NUTS classification is available here: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/nuts/overview.