Union territorial typologies are the grouping of territorial units of the Member States of the European Union being used for many years by Eurostat in order to meet the growing demand for internationally comparable data in the context of cohesion policy and territorial development. In order to ensure the harmonized use of typologies and their stability, Eurostat launched a legislative initiative called “Tercet”, which aimed to integrate the most important typologies with the NUTS Regulation. This initiative resulted in the announcement of the Regulation (EU) 2017/2391 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2017 amending Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003 as regards the territorial typologies (Tercet) (OJ L 350, 29.12.2017, p. 1–6).
The following typologies were introduced by this regulation:
- grid-based typology at the 1 km2 grid resolution level:
- establishes: urban centres, urban clusters, rural grid cells
typologies established at local administrative units (LAU) level (in Poland – gminas):
- degree of urbanisation (DEGURBA)
- functional urban areas (FUA)
- coastal areas
- typologies established at NUTS level 3:
- urban-rural typology
- metropolitan typology
- coastal typology
Extensive information on union territorial typologies is available in the Eurostat publication: Methodological manual on territorial typologies.
