Administrative territorial unit type is a controlled vocabulary that provides the various types of administrative territorial units within the Member States of the European Union. It is linked to the controlled vocabulary Administrative territorial unit, which provides the list of the subdivisions per country.
The categorisation of these types is based on official national information and the Committee of the Regions of the European Union has provided the translations in all official languages of the European Union. The ISO 3166-2 standard has also been used. Where there are differences between the typesof administrative units and the ISO code, the legal basis of the country concerned has taken precedence.
An administrative unit is defined for administrative purposes with a certain degree of autonomy and is country-specific. The administrative unit refers to the public administration to which administrative law applies.
The administrative territorial unit types must not be confused with the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS). The NUTS is defined according to the population living in the territorial unit and is used in an economic/statistical environment. The administrative territorial unit types must not be confused with the jurisdiction territories designed for the competence area of Courts. In certain countries, the subdivisions may be the same for the administrative, economic, statistical and judicial units.
Administrative territorial unit type is maintained by the Publications Office of the European Union and disseminated on the EU Vocabularies website.
