The system of regions of the 'Nomenclature d'unités territoriales statistiques' (NUTS) of the Statistical Office of the European Union (Eurostat) subdivides the area of the European Union corresponding to national administrative areas into NUTS-0, NUTS-1, NUTS-2 and NUTS 3 regions, where the number indicates the level.

The member states are NUTS-0 regions. Each member state consists of several NUTS-1 regions, each NUTS-1 region consists of several NUTS-2 regions, etc. For instance, in Germany the NUTS-1 regions are the German 'Länder', the NUTS-2 regions are administrative districts and the NUTS-3 level are counties. In some cases NUTS-1 regions are also NUTS-2 region.

A similar system of statistical regions was also established by Eurostat for the EFTA and the 12 Candidate Countries.

The size of the regions at each level varies considerbaly depending on the member state. Regional information, i.e. socio-economic data, can be linked to regions via the unique region code.

NUTS-2 regions are used in several research-projects for DG VII of the European Commission (e.g. STREAMS, and SASI). In these projects a slightly modified system of regions with further subdivisions of Denmark and Ireland and equivalent regions defined for non-EU countries Russia, Poland and Switzerland is applied.

NUTS-3 regions are the basic spatial units for the calculation of accessibility and peripherality indicators within the PERIPHERALITY project for DG XVI of the European Commission.

The following three maps show the three NUTS levels for the EU member states (yellow) and the Candidate Countries (grey). The remaining European non-EU countries are shown with their national borders.