The local unit is an enterprise or part thereof (e. g. a workshop, factory, warehouse, office, mine or depot) situated in a geographically identified place. At or from this place economic activity is carried out for which — save for certain exceptions — one or more persons work (even if only parttime) for one and the same enterprise.

1. If a person works in more than one place (maintenance or surveillance) or at home, the local unit is taken to be place from which instructions emanate or from where the work is organized. It must be possible to specify the employment attached to any local unit. However, all legal units that serve as the legal basis for an enterprise or a part thereof must have a local unit which is the registered office, even if nobody works there. Moreover, a local unit can comprise only ancillary activities.

2. A geographically identified place must be interpreted on a strict basis: two units belonging to the same enterprise at different locations (even within the smallest administrative unit of the Member State) must be regarded as two local units. However, a single local unit may be spread over several adjacent administrative areas, in which case, by convention, the postal address is the determining factor.

3. The boundaries or the unit are determined by the boundaries of the site, which means for example that a public highway running through does not interrupt the continuity of the boundaries. The definition is similar to the one in paragraph 101 of the introduction to ISIC Rev. 3 in that it concerns localization in the strict sence of the term, but differs from the definition in paragraph 102 in that this strict sense may not vary according to the statistics under consideration. In addition, the criterion of persons working in the unit is normally applied.

4. The ESA-REG (the regional application of the ESA) uses the same definition of local unit for regional accounts purposes.

• Council Regulation (EEC) No 696/93 of 15 March 1993 on the statistical units for the observation and analysis of the production system in the Community
  Place of publication: (Dz. Urz. UE L 76 z 30.3.1993, str. 1—11)