Management of NUTS change in Poland Making the capital city an own region Jarosław Kalski Regional Statistics Unit Regional and Environmental Surveys Department Central Statistical Office of Poland Luxembourg, 18th October 2016

NUTS 2013 and LAU in Poland NUTS / LAU Administrative level Amount of units NUTS 1 Group of voivodships 6 NUTS 2 Voivodships 16 NUTS 3 Group of powiats, cities with powiat status 72 LAU 1 Powiats, cities with powiat status 380* LAU 2 Gminas 2478* * As for 01.01.2016

NUTS 3 in Poland Warsaw in NUTS 2013

The reasons for the reorganization ! ! lack of consistency of Mazowieckie voivodship in terms of economic development and wealth; Warsaw is the largest capital of the EU countries which is not separated at NUTS 2 level (within the city limits or within agglomeration).

Warsaw <-> NUTS 2 Mazowieckie The gross domestic product of the whole voivodship per capita was in 2012 almost 160% of the national average. In practice, however, this is mainly an indicator of wealth of Warsaw, which produces nearly 60% of voivodship’s GDP. Other subregions have up to 4-times lower rates of GDP per capita (up to 45% of the voivodship average). The registered unemployment rate for Mazowieckie voivodship was in 2014: from 9.8% to 4.3% for Warsaw districts, from 14.2% to 22.1% for the remaining part of the region. In our proposal of dividing Mazowieckie voivodship into two NUTS 2 units, we have also taken into account factors such as: land use and local policy in this field, social and economic issues, transport links, technical infrastructure, public investments.

Timeline 2012-2013 NUTS 2013 revision round March-July 2015 Consultations and analysis July 2015 Eurostat launches officially the NUTS 2016 revision round September 2015 Adoption of the proposed modification of the statistical division of Mazowieckie into two NUTS level 2 units by the Council of Ministers October-November 2015 Consultations with Eurostat on proposed modification February 2016 Official proposal of NUTS modification in Poland was send to Eurostat Timeline With: - Ministry of Development, - Ministry of Foreign Affairs, - Ministry of the Administration, - The Office of the Marshal of the Mazowieckie Voivodeship, - Warsaw City Hall.

NUTS 2016 – proposed changes in Poland NUTS level Changes NUTS 1 one new created, - two units changed boundaries, label change (from region to makroregion) NUTS 2 - one unit was divided into two; creation of capital region NUTS 3 - five units changed boundaries, - one new created

Mazowieckie voivodship in NUTS 2016

What we learned / Good practice / Problems encountered In CSO point of view, we would prefer to stabilize the NUTS classification, but we understand the need of regional authorities which manage development for data in modified division of territory; Consultation with different authorities is important because NUTS classification is used for not only statistical purposes (European fund, regional development strategies); Discuss, discuss, discuss – stability of classification versus the needs of other authorities; Strong arguments for change! Problem for public statistics – never-ending story with recalculation

Next step (after adoption of NUTS 2016) recalculation of time series – availability as of 1.01.2018; recalculated data, in first step, will be send to Eurostat database and will fill CSO databases such as Local Data Bank and development monitoring system STRATEG

Since I mentioned system STRATEG… It’s a system created by CSO of Poland for programming and monitoring of development policy. It is a collection of data derived from different sources and used to monitor the implementation of strategies binding in Poland (at the national, supra-national and voivodship levels) as well as in the European Union (Europe 2020 strategy). In addition, the system gathers statistical indicators relevant to the implementation of cohesion policy. Apart from numerical data, STRATEG also includes definitions of concepts, methodological explanations, reports and thematic analyses. Along with a highly developed database application, the STRATEG system offers its users functional tools supporting the analysis of socio-economic trends in form of charts and maps.

How does your country monitor cohesion policy? „Does your country have a cohesion policy monitoring system?” „Does your NSI take part in evaluation process of Operational Programmes?” „…” NSI (RESCO), ?DG REGIO, Eurostat (E4)? November 2016 Result: report „Monitoring of cohesion policy in EU – experience of Member States”

Thank you for your attention! j.kalski@stat.gov.pl