To meet the demand for statistics at a local level, Eurostat maintains a system of Local Administrative Units (LAUs) compatible with NUTS. These LAUs are the building blocks of the NUTS, and comprise the municipalities and communes of the European Union. The LAUs are: - administrative for reasons such as the availability of data and policy implementation capacity; - a subdivision of the NUTS 3 regions covering the whole economic territory of the Member States; - appropriate for the implementation of local level typologies included in TERCET, namely the coastal area and DEGURBA classification. Since there are frequent changes to the LAUs, Eurostat publishes an updated list towards the end of each year. The LAUs are currently available from 2011 onwards. The NUTS regulation makes provision for EU Member States to send the lists of their LAUs to Eurostat. If available, Eurostat receives additionally basic administrative data by means of the annual LAU lists, namely total population and total area for each LAU.

This data set contains the administrative boundaries at country level of the world and is based on the geometry from EBM v12.x. of EuroGeographics for the members of Eurogeographics, the Global Administrative Units Layer (2015) from FAO (UN) and geometry from the Turkish National Statistical Office. This dataset consists of 2 feature classes (regions, boundaries) per scale level and there are 6 different scale levels (100K, 1M, 3M, 10M, 20M and 60M). The public data set (1M - 60M) is available under the Download link indicated below. The full data set (100K - 60M) GISCO.CNTR_2016 is available via the EC restricted download link.

This data set contains the administrative boundaries at country level of the world and is based on the geometry from EBM v2020 (ReferenceDate 31.12.2018) of EuroGeographics for the members of Eurogeographics, and GISCO Countries 2020. This dataset consists of 2 feature classes (regions, boundaries) per scale level and there are 6 different scale levels (100K, 1M,3M, 10M, 20M and 60M). The public data set (1M - 60M) is available under the Download link indicated below. The full data set (100K - 60M) GISCO.CNTR_2020 is available via the EC restricted download link.

The Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) is a hierarchical classification of statistical regions and subdivides the EU economic territory into regions of four different levels (NUTS 0, 1, 2 and 3, moving respectively from larger to smaller territorial units). NUTS 1 is the most aggregated level. An additional Country level (NUTS 0) is also available for countries where the the nation at statistical level does not coincide with the administrative boundaries. For example Mt Athos in Greece and Mellum and Minsener Ogg in Germany. The NUTS classification has been officially established through Regulation (EC) No 2016/2066 of the European Parliament and of the Council and its amendments. A non-official NUTS-like classification has been defined for the EFTA countries and candidate countries. An introduction to the NUTS classification is available here: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/nuts/overview. The datasets are based on: EuroBoundaryMap (EBM) from EuroGeographics (scale of 1:100.000), Global Administrative Unit Layer (GAUL) country data from UN/FAO, data from the National Statistical Institute of Turkey (TurkStat) (might vary for different years). The different scale levels were derived by generalisation of the 100K scale. The public datasets are available under the Download link indicated below. Available scales are: 100k, 1M, 3M, 10M, 20M, 60M. Date of the NUTS regions are currently available for the years 2003, 2006, 2010, 2013, 2016 and 2021. The full datasets are available via the EC restricted download link. Here six scale ranges (100K, 1M, 3M, 10M and 20M, 60M) are available. Coverage is the economic territory of the EU, EFTA countries and candidate countries as in the respective year.

OpenStreetMap (OSM) is a collaborative project to create a free editable map of the world. OSM is considered a prominent example of volunteered geographic information. Data are collected using manual survey, GPS devices, aerial photography, and other free sources. This crowdsourced data are then made available under the Open Database License.

This dataset contains areas by degree of urbanisation (revised definition, 2018). The degree of urbanisation classifies local administrative units (LAU in Europe into three categories: thinly (rural), intermediate (towns and suburbs or small urban) and densely populated (cities or large urban) areas. The classification is based on a population distribution grid with raster cells of 1 sqkm size. Data are available for EU countries, Norway, Switzerland, Serbia and Iceland. The data is available at 1:100 000 resolution for internal commission users and a generalised 1:1 000 000 resolution is available to the public via the GISCO Dedicated Section on the Eurostat website. Classification based on method described in manual on Territitorial typologies in consulation with Member states.