In structural business statistics, results for enterprises have been presented according to the EU enterprise definition - as specified by the EU Regulation on statistical units - since reference year 2018, the first year the new definition was applied.
The EU Regulation on statistical units defines the enterprise as "the smallest combination of legal units that is an organisational unit producing goods or services, which benefits from a certain degree of autonomy in decision-making". Consequently, an enterprise may also consist of several legal units, that is, the smallest legally independent units which keep accounts for reasons of commercial or tax law.
Up to reference year 2017 inclusive, a legal unit was treated as equivalent to an enterprise in German official statistics and the two terms were used synonymously. The use of the EU enterprise definition will ensure a clear distinction between these two terms in the future, and the "enterprise" according to the EU definition will serve as the central unit of presentation in structural business statistics. Data on legal units will continue to be published for a transitional period. Furthermore, the range of data on enterprises based on the EU definition will be expanded.
The presentation of results for enterprises according to the definition under EU law has advantages for economic analysis. For example, if data are analysed at the level of the legal unit and the persons employed in one legal unit in industry are transferred to another independent legal unit, statistics for the original legal unit would provide data on production without persons employed. Results for enterprises according to the EU definition are better suited to provide a realistic picture of economic aggregates such as labour productivity or intermediate consumption ratios. This is also a more appropriate basis for business concentration analyses.