Birth rate of enterprises in the European Union: 9.8 % in 2016 (last figures released by Eurostat)

The number of newly-born enterprises in the European Union (EU) as a proportion of the total number of active EU enterprises stood at 9.8 % in 2016, slightly higher than the corresponding figure in 2015 (9.6 %), according to the last figures released by Eurostat.

The birth rates were above 16 % in Lithuania (18.8 %), Malta (16.4 %) and Latvia (16.2 %) and were close to the EU average in Spain, France and the Netherlands. At the other end of the scale, the lowest enterprise birth rates were in Greece (4.5 %) and Belgium (6.2 %).

What are SBS?

Structural business statistics (SBS) and global business activities cover industry, construction, trade and services. Presented according to the NACE activity classification, they describe the structure, conduct and performance of businesses across the European Union (EU) – data are available for the EU28/EU27 and for the Member States.

The statistics can be broken down to a very detailed sectoral level (several hundred economic activities). A subset of the SBS information is also available for European regions, as well as according to the size of enterprises.

The information contained within SBS is therefore more detailed than national accounts.

The main variables within SBS are generally collected and presented as monetary values, or as counts (for example, numbers of enterprises or persons employed); this is in contrast to short-term business statistics, where the data are presented as indices (generally in relation to a base year).

Generally SBS does not collect information on products. The external trade and the production of specific products are covered by external trade statistics and/or PRODCOM. The exceptional presentation of products statistics within SBS concern for example multi-yearly data for products sold in distributive trades, or information on certain financial products (such as life assurance).