Overview

The ‘statistical classification of economic activities’ in the European Community, abbreviated as NACE, is the classification of economic activities in the European Union (EU). The term NACE is derived from the French title: Nomenclature statistique des activités économiques dans la Communauté européenne. Various NACE versions have been developed since 1970.

The newest version is NACE revision 2 update 1 (NACE rev. 2.1), which is to be used for European statistics from 2025 onwards. This was adopted by the European Commission in October 2022.

For European statistics referring to the period 2008-2024, the members of the European Statistical System (ESS) are using the NACE revision 2 (NACE rev. 2).

Difference between rev. 2 and 2.1

NACE rev. 2.1 introduces new concepts at all levels of the classification, and restructures a number of the existing headings. At the same time, efforts have been made to maintain the structure of the classification in all areas that do not explicitly require change based on new concepts. 

Classes for which some activities move from a NACE rev. 2 class to another NACE rev. 2.1 class are presented in the correspondence tables.

Classifcation of activities in NACE rev. 2.1

The NACE rev. 2.1 structure as set out in the regulation is not sufficiently self-explanatory to allow users to classify each economic activity. Therefore, Eurostat and its partners in the ESS have developed explanatory notes that present:

• inclusions to inform users which activities to classify under each NACE rev. 2.1 heading
• exclusions to help users avoid misclassifications.

Roll-out of NACE rev. 2.1 

Currently, Eurostat and its partners in the ESS are preparing the ground for the roll-out by:

• drafting introductory guidelines to complement the more specific explanatory notes by describing the overall logic of how activities are classified in NACE rev. 2.1
• establishing plans for backcasting. This refers to recalculating time series which were reported under NACE rev. 2, so that they can be presented by NACE rev. 2.1
• establishing plans for double reporting. This refers to tabulating data by NACE rev. 2 and NACE rev. 2.1 in parallel.

The description of the transition to NACE rev. 2.1 gives further details on the roll-out.