When do environmental economic accounts move to NACE Rev 2.1?

Environmental economic accounts are listed by Eurostat as a domain whose data transmission requirements were updated for NACE Rev. 2.1, with changes set out in Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/472. No single application date for this domain was verified in the pages consulted for this guide, and no date published as checked on 28 October 2026 is asserted for it here. The general range applies: from 1 January 2025 to 1 January 2031 (FIXED range), depending on the statistical domain.

What are environmental economic accounts?

Environmental economic accounts link environmental data, such as emissions, energy use, or material flows, with economic data organised by activity. The NACE breakdown lets a reader see which activities the environmental pressures are associated with, in the same classification terms as the economic accounts. The accounts are compiled by national statistical institutes and transmitted to Eurostat. They are aggregates, built from surveys, administrative sources and models, and they are not a list of individual businesses with environmental permits. A change in the classification terms changes how the aggregates are broken down. It does not change the physical flows, and it does not create or remove any environmental obligation for a specific unit.

What does the Eurostat transition page state?

The Eurostat transition page lists environmental economic accounts among the domains for which updated data transmission requirements have been developed on the basis of the correspondence table between NACE Rev. 2 and NACE Rev. 2.1. It states that changes for this domain are set out in Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/472. The page consulted does not state a single application date for the domain. This guide records the instrument name exactly as Eurostat gives it, records the general range, and records that no domain date was verified. A reader who needs the domain date should open the delegated regulation itself and the Eurostat page for environmental economic accounts, and should record the date with its FIXED or EXPECTED label from that text, not from this guide.

Why does the activity breakdown need special care in this domain?

In environmental accounts, the same physical flow can be associated with different activities depending on how the unit is classified, and a split class can move part of a flow from one activity to another without any change in the flow itself. Where a Rev. 2 class splits into two or more Rev. 2.1 classes, the correspondence table shows a one to many mapping, which does not by itself allocate the flow between the new classes. The allocation in a published account depends on the compilation method, the source data, and any backcasting applied. A reader who compares an environmental account before and after the changeover should therefore check three things: the NACE version in the metadata, the mapping type for the classes that dominate the account, and any note about a break in series or a restated series. A change in the share of an activity may reflect reclassification, a change in the underlying flow, or both, and the metadata is the record that separates them.

Element	What to record
Domain	Environmental economic accounts
Instrument named by Eurostat	Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2025/472
General range	From 1 January 2025 to 1 January 2031 (FIXED range)
Domain application date	No date published as checked on 28 October 2026
Version in the dataset used	To be read from the dataset metadata

The last row is left open on purpose. It is completed from the dataset in use, at the time of use, and it is the row that prevents a comparison across versions from being made silently.

What is the relationship to the wider classification system?

NACE sits in an integrated system of statistical classifications, as Eurostat explains in its NACE background article. ISIC is the international classification of activities, CPC is the central product classification, CPA is the European classification of products by activity, and PRODCOM and the Combined Nomenclature cover goods. Environmental economic accounts use the activity classification alongside product and material classifications, and a change in NACE therefore sits alongside other classification work, not alone. The explanatory notes for NACE Rev. 2.1 and the correspondence tables are the Eurostat documents that record what changed in activity terms. Product classifications have their own texts and their own timetables, and a date for NACE does not fix a date for a product classification.

What does this timetable not decide?

The updated requirements for environmental economic accounts do not decide whether a specific business has an environmental obligation, a permit, or a reporting duty. Those questions are governed by environmental law and by the authority that administers it, not by a statistical classification. The EUR-Lex summary states the legislation applies only to the use of the classification for statistical purposes. The entry for a specific unit is confirmed with the national statistical institute or the business register that holds the record. The account is an aggregate. The obligation, where one exists, is recorded elsewhere.

Open the delegated regulation named on the Eurostat transition page, record the version and reference period from the dataset metadata, and confirm any single entry with the institute or register that holds it.