EUROSTAT

The agency within the European Union charged with providing statistical information for the continent, as well as to ensure that member countries are using acceptable methods to track and report statistics within their borders. The Eurostat is led by a director-general, and governed by the Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs. The most important statistics are released via press releases.

Eurostat governs the collection of a broad array of statistics, including those concerning population, industry, transport, agriculture and finance. Economists, businesses and investors use the data provided by the agency to estimate how the European Union and its member countries are performing, and the data is especially important due to the size of the overall European economy.