The Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) is a geocode standard for referencing the administrative divisions of countries for statistical purposes. The standard was developed by the European Union, and thus only covers the member states of the EU in detail (see also: Regions of the European Union). Eurostat also devised a hierarchy for the 10 countries that joined the EU in 2004, but these are subject to minor changes. The NUTS divisions do not necessarily correspond to administrative divisions within the country. The acronym is derived from the French name for the scheme, nomenclature des unités territoriales statistiques.

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 9 entities, capital letters are used to continue the numbering.

In addition to the full three levels for the European Union countries, all countries have a NUTS code with a two-letter code for a continent and two numbers for the country, and for the USA, Canada and Australia the states, provinces, and territories are numbered separately.

There are some anomalies: for example, Gibraltar is listed as being outside the EU with the code EO21; while French Guiana is listed twice, once in France as FR930 and once in South America as AS13.

NUTS is thus in some extent similar to the ISO 3166-2 standard, as well as the FIPS standard of the United States.

Levels

There are three levels of NUTS defined, with two levels of local administrative units (LAUs) below that, historically called NUTS levels 4 and 5 and sometimes still described as such. Note that not all countries have every level of division. Luxembourg, for example, has only LAUs; the three NUTS divisions each correspond to the entire country itself.

Countries		NUTS 1		NUTS 2		NUTS 3
Austria		Groups of states	3	States	9	Groups of Bezirks	35
Belgium		Regions	3	Provinces	11	Arrondissements	43
Denmark		-	1	-	1	Counties	15
Finland		Mainland Finland	1	Large areas	4	Regions	19
		Åland	1	-	1	-	1
France		ZEAT	8	Régions	22	Départements	96
		Overseas departments	1	Overseas departments	4	Département d'outre-mer	4
Germany		States (Länder or Bundesländer)	16	Regierungsbezirke	41	Districts	439
Greece		Groups of development regions	4	Peripheries	13	Prefectures	51
Ireland		-	1	Regions	2	Regional Authority Regions	8
Italy		Groups of regions	5	Regions	21	Provinces	103
Luxembourg		-	1	-	1	-	1
Netherlands		Landsdelen	4	Provinces	12	COROP regio's	40
Portugal		Continental Portugal	1	Comissões de coordenação regional	5	Groups of Municipalities	28
		Azores and Madeira	2	-	2	-	2
Spain		Groups of autonomous communities	7	Autonomous communities	17	Provinces	50
				Ceuta and Melilla	2	-	2
Sweden		-	1	National areas	8	Counties	21
United Kingdom		Regions of England	9	Groups of Counties; Inner and Outer London	30	Unitary authorities or groups of districts	93
		Wales	1	Groups of unitary authorities	2	Groups of unitary authorities	12
		Scotland	1	Groups of unitary authorities or LECs	4	Groups of unitary authorities or LECs	23
		Northern Ireland	1	County	1	Groups of districts	5
EU-15		-	72	-	213	-	1091
Bulgaria		Regions	2	Planning Regions	6	Oblasts	28
Cyprus		-	1	-	1	-	1
Czech Republic		-	1	Groups of Regions	8	Regions	14
Estonia		-	1	-	1	Groups of Counties	5
Hungary		Groups of Regions	3	Regions	7	Counties + Budapest	20
Latvia		-	1	-	1	Regions	6
Lithuania		-	1	-	1	Counties	10
Malta		-	1	-	1	Islands	2
Poland		Groups of Voivodeships	6	Voivodeships of Poland	16	Podregiony (Groups of Powiats)	45
Romania		Macroregiunea	4	Regions	8	Counties and Bucharest	42
Slovakia		-	1	Groups of Regions	4	Regions	8
Slovenia		-	1	-	1	Statistical Regions	12
EU-27		-	95	-	268	-	1291
Liechtenstein		-	1		1		1
Norway		-	1		7		19
Switzerland		-	1	Regions	7	Cantons	26

Examples

• DE: Germany
• DE7: Hesse - The Bundesland as the top level subdivision of Germany
• DE71: Darmstadt region - Regierungsbezirk as second level
• DE71E: Wetteraukreis - Kreis as the third level
• AA: Asia
• AA25: Thailand
• US16: Kansas

See also

• ISO 3166
• ISO 3166-1
• ISO 3166-2
• List of FIPS region codes

External links

• Correspondence between the NUTS levels and the national administrative units — Eurostat
• NUTS Statistical Regions of Europe — Eurostat
• Hierarchical list of the NUTS (EU-15) — Eurostat
• Hierarchy in EFTA, Accession and Candidate countries — Eurostat
• List of NUTS codes (World Wide) — European Union