GISCO (Geographic Information System of the COmmission) is responsible for meeting the European Commission's geographical information needs at three levels: the European Union, its member countries, and its regions. In addition to creating statistical and other thematic maps, GISCO manages a database of geographical information, and provides related services to the Commission. Its database contains core geographical data covering the whole of Europe, such as administrative boundaries, and thematic geospatial information, such as population grid data. Some data are available for download by the general public and may be used for non-commercial purposes. For further details and information about any forthcoming new or updated datasets, see http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata. This metadata refers to the whole content of GISCO reference database extracted in June 2020, which contains both public datasets (also available for the general public through http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata) and datasets to be used only internally by the EEA (typically, but not only, GISCO datasets at 1:100k). The document GISCO-ConditionsOfUse.pdf provided with the dataset gives information on the copyrighted data sources, the mandatory acknowledgement clauses and re-dissemination rights. The license conditions for EuroGeographic datasets in GISCO are provided in a standalone document "LicenseConditions_EuroGeographics.pdf". The database is provided in GPKG files, with datasets at scales from 1:60M to 1:100K, with reference years spanning until 2021 (e.g. NUTS 2021). Attribute files are provided in CSV. The database manual, a file with the content of the database, a glossary, and a document with the naming conventions are also provided with the database. The main updates with respect to the previous version of the full database in the SDI (from Jul. 2018) are the addition of the following datasets: - Administrative boundaries at country level, 2020 (CNTR_2020) - Administrative boundaries at commune level, 2016 (COMM_2016) - Coastline boundaries, 2016 (COAS_2016) - Exclusive Economic Zones, 2016 (EEZ_2016) - Farm Accountancy Data Network based on NUTS 2016, 2018 (FADN_2018) - Local Administrative Units, 2018 (LAU_2018) - Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics, 2021 (NUTS_2021) - Political regions (NB.: defined by the Committee of the Regions), 2018 (POLREG_2018) - Pan-European Settlements, 2016 (STLL_2016) and 2018 (STLL_2018) - Transport Networks (NB.: railway lines, railway stations, roads, road junctions, levelcrossings, ferry routs and custom points), 2019 (TRAN_2019) - Urban Audit Areas, 2018 (URAU_2018) and 2020 (URAU_2020) NOTE: This metadata file is only for internal EEA purposes and in no case replaces the official metadata provided by Eurostat. For specific GISCO datasets included in this version there are individual EEA metadata files in the SDI: NUTS_2021 and CNTR_2020. For other GISCO datasets in the SDI, it is recommended to use the version included in this dataset. The original metadata files from Eurostat for the different GISCO datasets are available via ECAS login through the Eurostat metadata portal on https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/inspire-sdi/srv/eng/catalog.search#/home. For the public products metadata can also be downloaded from https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata. For more information about the full database or any of its datasets, please contact the SDI Team (sdi@eea.europa.eu).

The 'GISCO NUTS 2021' data set represents the NUTS 2021 regulation and statistical regions by means of multipart polygon, polyline and point topology. The NUTS geographical information is completed by attribute tables and a set of cartographic help lines to better visualize multipart polygonal regions. The NUTS nomenclature is a hierarchical classification of statistical regions defined by Eurostat. The NUTS classification subdivides the EU economic territory into 3 statistical levels. The NUTS 2021 classification has been established through the Commission Delegated Regulation 2019/1755, which entered into force on 8th August 2019 and applies from 1st January 2021. A non official NUTS-like classification has been defined for the EFTA countries and the candidate countries. At present, six scale ranges (100K, 1M, 3M, 10M and 20M, 60M) are maintained in the GISCO geodatabase. The polygon and boundary classes delineate the regions, while the points provide an anchor for each region. Associated tables contain basic information such as the name of the region. The public data set will be available at 1M, 3M, 10M, 20M, 60M, while the full data set at 100K is restricted. The data set covers EU Member States, EFTA countries, EU candidate countries and the UK. Following the departure of the UK from the European Union, the UK is no longer flagged as an EU Member State but retains its place in the NUTS and statistical regions data set. This metadata only refers to the full NUTS2021 dataset (polygons) at 100k (NUTS_RG_100K_2021), which is derived from the EuroBoundary Map 2020 (EBM2020) from Eurogeographics as well as GISCO NUTS 2016 (from Turkey). With the dataset it is also provided the table NUTS_AT_2021.dbf and an excel file NUTS2016-NUTS2021.xlsx with the list of changes between 2016 and 2021. IMPORTANT NOTE: Additional information, including the conditions of use and acknowledgement notice is included in the document provided with the dataset "GISCO NUTS 2021 Additional Information.pdf". Public access to this data set is restricted due to intellectual property rights. It shall only be used internally by the EEA, its ETCs and subcontractors working on behalf of the EEA. This metadata has been slightly adapted from the original metadata information provided by Eurostat (European Commission) and is to be used only for internal EEA purposes. An introduction to the NUTS classification is available here: http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/nuts/overview.