NUTS and enlargement Torbioern.Carlquist@ec.europa.eu

Chapter 1 Bulgaria, Romania

Next enlargement Bulgaria and Romania 1 January 2007 The NUTS Regulation (1059/2003) will be directly applicable in BG and RO Need to amend the annexes I, II and III

Current situation in BG, RO Statistical regions agreed rather long time ago Several regions not compliant with NUTS Regulation Romania has no level 1 regions Bulgaria has two too small level 2 regions

Procedure Agree with BG, RO about their future NUTS regions (discussion is on-going) Prepare an amendment to the NUTS Regulation Amend annexes I, II, III of the NUTS Regulation through co-decision procedure This amendment to be done separately from the NUTS 2006 revision

Modify regions in BG, RO BG – modify NUTS 1 and NUTS 2 RO – introduce NUTS 1 RO – change some labels of NUTS 2

Probable number of regions Level Bulgaria Romania NUTS 1 2 (non-adm.) 4 (non-adm.) NUTS 2 6 (non-adm.) 8 (non-adm.) NUTS 3 28 (adm.) 42 (adm.)

Chapter 2 Candidate countries

Statistical regions (CCs) Turkey – agreed on 3 levels in 2002 Croatia – need agreement on level 2 regions The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – need agreement on level 3 regions CARDS countries – Eurostat is open to first discussions on Statistical Regions, but there is no urgency All proposals will be checked against rules in NUTS Regulation

Chapter 3 EFTA countries

Statistical regions (EFTA) Iceland – new agreement on splitting the country into two statistical regions at level 3 from 1 Jan 2008 Liechtenstein – no change Norway – no change Switzerland – no change

Thanks for listening ! Any Questions ?