1. ESTP course on EuroGroups Register
1 What is EGR?
ESTP course on EuroGroups Register
22 – 23 May 2019

2. What is EGR?
The EuroGroups Register (EGR) is a central statistical business register of multinational enterprise groups in the EU Member States and in the EFTA countries
coverage: multinational enterprise groups operating in Europe, their constituent enterprises and legal units
the EGR process is in operation since 2009
For statistical use only
Restricted use for national statistical offices of EU and EFTA countries and national central banks of EU Member States

3. The work started years ago…
In 2003 Statistics Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands and UK launched a project:
MNE Project – Seeing the whole elephant
The MNE Project was an experiment on measuring the activities of groups using a mirror exercise
Measuring economic data on individual enterprises in one country vis-à-vis measuring the same data from the top of the MNE group
The results showed that it was necessary to start building a system integrating MNE groups data across countries and share them to have better quality

4. … to arrive to EGR
As a follow-up of the MNE Project in 2006 Eurostat launched the EGR pilot project for the creation of a European Business Register on MNE groups
4 NSIs participated in the pilot, UK, Germany, Netherlands, Hungary
new EU regulation on business registers BRs
NSIs have to register RELs and groups in their BR
allows micro data exchange to create EGR
EGR was set-up in 2008
In 2011 the new concept of EGR version 2.0 was launched

5. What is an enterprise group?
EU Regulation 696/93 on statistical units:

6. Statistical representation
1. As a simple set of legal units bound together
2. As a set of enterprises carring out economic activity
Legal Unit 1
Legal Unit 2
Legal Unit n
  
Enterprise Group
Enterprise 1
Enterprise 2
Enterprise n
  
Enterprise Group

7. Statistical representation
3. As a complete structure of legal units and their controlling relationships and the economic enterprises
Head
LEU A
Enterprise 1
Enterprise Group
LEU B
LEU F
LEU G
Enterprise 4
LEU C
LEU D
LEU H
LEU I
Enterprise 2
LEU E
LEU J
LEU K
Enterprise 5
Enterprise 3

8. Information needed for statistical representation
Legal units
Unique identifiers
Relationships: ownership shares / voting rights
LEU A controls LEU B with x% voting rights
Enterprises
Economic characteristics (turnover, employment, NACE code)
Links to legal units
Groups
Group characteristics (turnover, employment, main NACE code)
Global decision centre (GDC)
Global group head (GGH)

9. MNE group data in business registers
EU Regulation 177/2008 on statistical business registers
All Member States have to register the enterprise groups in their national business registers
National views on a multinational enterprise groups can be different
A global view is needed on groups to produce consistent business statistics

10. EGR legal background
EU Regulation 177/2008 on statistical business registers
Article 10 - Exchange of confidential data between Member States
Two implementing EU Regulations:
Data exchange with NSIs 192/2009
Data exchange with NCBs 1097/2010

11. The EGR mission
To provide a harmonised view on the multinational enterprise groups and their constituent units in the EU
consistent information
coordinated populations
coordinated data quality

12. The EGR network
NSI A
NSI C
NSI B …
EGR
First time that Eurostat exchanges micro data with NSIs and use them to create one single European product
Data files are exchanged in secure IT platform
Data are stored in secure IT environment

13. Example - before/after
NSIs mapped the groups individually
Group structures were not linked
Group heads could be different
before EGR… in reality…
DE ENT
AT ENT2
AT ENT2
AT ENT1
AT ENT1
AT ENT1
FI ENT
CH ENT
NSBRs

14. Example - before/after
With the EGR:
NSIs deliver to EGR pairwise relationships
CH-AT1
AT1-AT2, AT2-DE
FI-AT1
DE (no controlling LEU)
EGR creates the groups from the pairwise relationships
Validation of groups in EGR
before… in EGR…
DE ENT
AT ENT2
AT ENT1
CH ENT
FI ENT
EGR

15. Example - before/after
before EGR… after EGR…

16. EGR information EGR provides harmonised information on
MNE groups, enterprises, legal units (identification, demographic and economic characteristics)
Relationships and control
Shareholdings of at least 10%
Users can use EGR as
coordinated frame population
to derive consistent statistical output
with an improved quality
in measuring global activities
of European enterprises part of multinational groups

17. Statistics using EGR
Information on multinational enterprise groups are used for statistics related to globalisation in the EU Member States and EFTA countries, e.g.:
Foreign Affiliates Statistics (FATS)
Foreign Direct Investment statistics (FDI)
Structural Business Statistics (SBS)
Gross National Income statistics (GNI)
Etc.

18. National
databases
EGR

19. EGR 1.0 EGR process is running since 2009
First reference year of data was 2008
EGR 1.0 process was used for reference years 2008 to 2011
The EGR 1.0 process was based on commercial data
Commercial data were compared to NSI data
Validations were done by NSIs in several steps

20. EGR 1.0 process overview CDP EGR NSI Commercial data
Processing commercial data
Legal unit update
Processing LEU update
Relationships update
Processing relationships update
Preliminary frame
Validation frame
Processing validation corrections
Final frame 20

21. EGR redesign to EGR 2.0 (1)
Redesign of the EGR system to EGR 2.0 from 2012 to 2015
Targets of the redesign:
Improve the EGR process – collecting NSI data and improving it with commercial data. The EGR 1.0 process was validation of commercial data by NSIs
Create a system assigning unique IDs to the legal entities applied in the EGR data exchanges

22. EGR redesign to EGR 2.0 (2) Targets of the redesign:
Improve EGR functionalities (e.g. better validation of input files, collaborative platforms for users)
Create on-line tools for users with remote access
Improve the quality of EGR output
Targeting complete coverage on MNEs active in Europe
By the end of 2015 EGR 2.0 was fully implemented
Completely new system, new way of working, new database, new applications, new identifiers …

23. EGR 2.0 - Main concepts (1) Authenticity of NSIs data
NSI data and CDP data are complementary in EGR
NSI data have preference according to settings in the system
Unique identification of units
In EGR 1.0 the missing unique identification resulted several duplicates
Record based updating
Entities (LEUs, RELs, …) are updated on record level
Live register / Master frames
For the moment only one yearly cycle is implemented

24. EGR Main concepts (2)
Online applications for users with remote access to confidential data
EGR data are available for users and producers in different steps of the production
Collaborative platforms for users
Allowing modifications on EGR data
Individually or in batch mode with data files

25. EGR 2.0 process overview CDP EGR NSI Identification of legal units
Identification service
Commercial data (LEU,REL)
Processing NSI and commercial data
NSI data (LEU, REL, ENT)
Consult and update preliminary frame and GEG data
Initial and preliminary frames
Final frame 25

26. EGR 2.0 – Applications (1) Identification Service (EGR IS)
Supports users in identifying legal units
Core application (EGR CORE)
Consolidates input data and generates the frame
The 'heart' of EGR 2.0 (source, transformation, consolidation, output, administrative module)
Interactive Module (EGR IM)
Provides users with interactive web interface to validate data in consolidation area of EGR CORE
Output interface (EGR FATS)
Provides users with web interface to inspect output

27. EGR 2.0 – Applications (2) EGR IS EGR CORE EGR IM EGR FATS
CDP web- service
EGR IS
EGR CORE
NSIs
EGR IM
NSIs and CDPs
NSIs
EGR FATS
NSI and NCB users

28. Further reading Eurostat website - Statistics explained pages
Publicly available information on the EGR