The regions of Lithuania

In preparation for the upcoming enlargement of the European Union, Eurostat and the national statistical institutes of the 13 candidate countries have agreed on a regional breakdown (2) to be used by the European Commission for statistical purposes whenever possible. These regions have been defined according to principles similar to those used in the establishment of the Community nomenclature of territorial units for statistics NUTS).

However, this classification does not preclude any decision on the NUTS which will be taken as and when individual countries join the EU. Given that the agreement on the regional structure to be used for Turkey is too recent for data collection to have started, data coverage for candidate countries in this yearbook is restricted to the remaining 12 countries. In individual cases, it has not proved possible to include data for some or all candidate countries in a particular map because the data delivery structure for that specific field of statistics is still in the process of being established.