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. It 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 version of NACE Revision 2 that was published in 2006 (NACE Rev. 2).

Changes introduced by the update

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. 

A summary of the main changes is given in  section 4 of the NACE Rev. 2.1 introductory guidelines.

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.

Roll-out of NACE Rev. 2.1 

Eurostat and its partners in the ESS have prepared the ground for the roll-out by:

• publishing introductory guidelines that describe the overall logic of how activities are classified in NACE Rev. 2.1 and explanatory notes that give guidance for specific categories
• updating sectoral legislation to indicate how EU countries must transfer data to Eurostat according to NACE Rev. 2.1
• establishing plans for backcasting. 
• 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.