NUTS and LAU

Feature : NUTS and LAU

Description

Regions for statistical purposes in the European Union

Group

references

Tags

ref:nuts=* ref:nuts:1=* ref:nuts:2=* ref:nuts:3=* ref:lau=*

Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) and Local Administrative Units (LAU) are standards for territorial units developed by European Union for statistical purposes. It defines hierarchical structure of territories with 4 levels (NUTS1, NUTS2, NUTS3, and LAU).

Please help to gather information about NUTS and LAU hierarchies relevant for OSM mappers on this page.

Levels and references

For each EU member country, a hierarchy of three NUTS levels is established by Eurostat; the subdivisions in some levels do not necessarily correspond to administrative divisions within the country, but are described as "socio-economic regions" and used for European statistics.

A NUTS code begins with a two-letter code referencing the country, which is identical to the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code (except UK instead of GB for the United Kingdom). The subdivision of the country is then referred to with one number. A second or third subdivision level is referred to with another number each. Each numbering starts with 1, as 0 is used for the upper level. In case the subdivision has more than nine entities, capital letters are used to continue the numbering. A similar statistical system is defined for the candidate countries and members of the European Free Trade Association, but they are not technically part of NUTS governed by the regulations.

• NUTS1 - large regions which have approximate population 3-7 millions. Bigger states are separated to more NUTS1 regions. Reference examples - Luxembourg has NUTS1 code LU0, German state Hessen has code DE7, Scotland has NUTS1 code UKM.
• NUTS2 - many European financial institutions operate on this level which have approximate population 0.8-3 millions. Some smaller state are only one NUTS2 region Reference examples - Luxembourg is has NUTS2 code LU00, Central Bohemian Region has NUTS2 code CZ020.
• NUTS3 - local administration often operates at this level which have approximate population 150-800 thousand. Reference example: Wetteraukreis – Kreis has NUTS3 code DE71E.

Note that not all countries have every level of division, depending on their size. One of the most extreme cases is Luxembourg, which has only LAUs; the three NUTS divisions each correspond to the entire country itself. It is however advisable to create separate relation for each of these level even though the territory is the same. Not only the code can be different, but also the name of region depending on what level of nomenclature we speak. NUTS is thus in some extent similar to the ISO 3166-2 standard, as well as the FIPS 10-4 standard of the United States.

Historical notes

• Originally, there was NUTS4 that was later replaced by LAU1. LAU1 was removed in 2017.
• Originally, there was NUTS5 that was later replaced by LAU2. Since the removal of LAU1 in 2017, LAU2 is simply known as LAU. Although the current LAU was thus derived from NUTS5 the structure of codes may differ. For example NUTS5 code for Beroun used to be CZ0202531057 (or CZ0202 531057) but the LAU code is only 531057.

Regions belonging to more than one NUTS level

There are several territories which belong to more NUTS levels, e.g. they have more NUTS reference numbers, for example

• NUTS 1, 2 and 3: Berlin Berlin, Hamburg Hamburg, Luxembourg Luxembourg
• NUTS 1 and 2: Thuringia Thuringia, North Macedonia North Macedonia
• NUTS 2 and 3: Utrecht Utrecht, Region of Bratislava Region of Bratislava

Overpass queries to find all of them:

• NUTS1, 2 and 3
• NUTS1 and 2
• NUTS2 and 3

Tagging

There is currently no standardized tagging schemes, but the de facto standard is to have separate relation for each NUTS level with all or some of these keys:

Key	Value example	Notes
type	boundary	(required) denotes that the relation is a boundary=* relation.
boundary	administrative	(required if this matches a national administrative subdivision) denotes that the relation is a administrative relation. Otherwise use boundary=statistical.
admin_level	6	(required if this matches a national administrative subdivision) see admin_level=*.
name	Ústecký kraj	(required) name of the region
wikipedia	cs:Ústecký kraj	(recommended) the page name on Wikipedia describing the region. This value is very important as Nominatim search derives the importance of region and the result order heavily from this key.
wikidata	Qnnnn	(recommended) the Wikidata element for the region.
population	828026	(recommended) population of the region
source:population	csu:uir-zsj	(recommended) source for population information (possibly with year or date). This is very useful when one wants to update, precise the information in population key.
ref	CZ042	(optional) the NUTS1/NUTS2/NUTS3/LAU reference number, in case that there are more nomenclatures, it is not clear which one to use. In the European Union it is probably safe to use this official classification. But other countries prefer here their national official reference number (used in most sources and applications, and better known by local users), as NUTS/LAN areas may not always match the current administrative subdivisions (so NUTS/LAU reference numbers they are only used for European statistics, but not directly for most national statistics).
ref:nuts	CZ042	(required if this is a NUTS region) the NUTS1/NUTS2/NUTS3 reference number Since several regions have more than one NUTS ref number, it may pose a question which one should be used here.
ref:nuts:1 or ref:nuts:2 or ref:nuts:3	CZ042	(optional) the same as ref:nuts, but explicitly mentioning the level to which region belongs. This is probably better for computer parsers, since there is currently to tag which like nuts_level=* which would show at which level of nomenclature we are. However this can be infered directly from the hierarchical LAU code format. If a region has more NUTS reference numbers, each of them can be used on OSM with this scheme while it is not the case with ref:nuts.
ref:lau	531057	(required if this is a LAU region) the LAU reference number. Note that unlike NUTS codes, LAU codes do not include a country code prefix.
ref:lau:1 and ref:lau:2	531057	(deprecated) These are no longer relevant, since the two-level LAU1 and LAU2 structure has ended in 2017.
is_in:country	Česko	(deprecated) country in which the region belongs. Another is_in=* keys can be used as well.
is_in:nuts	CZ0723	(deprecated) smallest NUTS region to which the region belongs (NUTS3 for LAU regions, NUTS2 for NUTS3, etc ...). Due to the hierarchical way with which the NUTS ref numbers are constructed, this can be infered directly from the NUTS ref of the current region.
is_in:nuts:1 is_in:nuts:2 is_in:nuts:3	CZ0723	(deprecated) NUTS-x region to which the region belongs.

Country-specific information

Country	NUTS1	NUTS2	NUTS3	LAU
Belgium The NUTS code prefix is BE.	boundary=administrative admin_level=4	Within the Flemish and Walloon Regions: boundary=administrative admin_level=6 The Brussels-Capital Region is the same as NUTS1.	boundary=administrative admin_level=7	boundary=administrative admin_level=8 The LAU code is the value of ref:INS=*.
Czech Republic The NUTS code prefix is CZ.	Same as country	boundary=administrative admin_level=4	boundary=administrative admin_level=6	boundary=administrative admin_level=8 The LAU code is the last six digits of ref=*.
Luxembourg The NUTS code prefix is LU.	Same as country	Same as country	Same as country	boundary=administrative admin_level=8 The LAU code is the value of ref:lau2=*.
Netherlands (European part) The NUTS code prefix is NL.	boundary=statistical designation=landsdeel	boundary=administrative admin_level=4	Not mapped yet	boundary=administrative admin_level=8 The LAU code is GM plus the value of ref:gemeentecode=*.

Mapping status

Table updated: 2024-08-08

Country	NUTS1	NUTS2	NUTS3	OverPass
BE - Belgique/België	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
BG - България	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
CZ - Česko	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
DK - Danmark	✅	✅	❌	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
DE - Deutschland	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
EE - Eesti	✅	✅	❌	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
IE - Éire/Ireland	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
EL - Ελλάδα	✅	✅	❌	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
ES - España	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
FR - France	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
HR - Hrvatska	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
IT - Italia	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
CY - Κύπρος	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
LV - Latvija	✅	✅	❌	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
LT - Lietuva	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
LU - Luxembourg	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
HU - Magyarország	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
MT - Malta	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
NL - Nederland	✅	✅	❌	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
AT - Österreich	✅	✅	❌	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
PL - Polska	✅	✅	❌	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
PT - Portugal	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
RO - România	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
SI - Slovenija	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
SK - Slovensko	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
FI - Suomi/Finland	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
SE - Sverige	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
UK - United Kingdom	❓	❓	❓	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
IS - Ísland	✅	✅	❌	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
LI - Liechtenstein	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
NO - Norge	✅	✅	❌	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
CH - Schweiz/Suisse/Svizzera	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
ME - Црна Гора	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
MK - Северна Македонија	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
AL - Shqipëria	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
RS - Srbija/Сpбија	✅	✅	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3
TR - Türkiye	❌	❌	✅	NUTS1 NUTS2 NUTS3

External links

• Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 May 2003 on the establishment of a common classification of territorial units for statistics (NUTS) (current version in 24 languages, the NUTS regions are listed in the annex)
• NUTS overview, Eurostat, European Commission
  • List of NUTS codes (2021 edition):
    • downloadable data for NUTS-1, NUTS-2 and NUTS-3 (Excel or HTML format)
    • Statistical regions in the European Union and partner countries. NUTS and statistical regions 2021 (PDF)
  • List of current LAU codes and their mapping to NUTS regions codes (Excel format)