In May 2022, in line with Grant Agreement № 101052213-2021-BG-CITY with the co-financing of the European Commission, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) has started the work on the next stage of the project ‘Data collection for City and Subnational Statistics’. Bulgaria has been participating in the previous phases of the project since 2004.
The general objectives set in the current phase of the project are to further adapt the statistical infrastructure needed to enable the production and communication of statistics at subnational level, in particular data on cities and their Functional Urban Areas; continuation of the currently available time series of demographic and socio-economic data, as well as promotion of the European harmonised concepts for territorial typologies, including those that are the subject of this data collection. Since 2017, the city data collection has had a legislative basis - the so-called TERCET Regulation, which complements the NUTS Regulation. The TERCET Implementing Regulation, published in 2019, is the legal act that defines the uniform conditions for the harmonised application of various territorial typologies that use population density as a main geographical layer for delineation[1]. The harmonised application of the definitions for the different territorial typologies is an important asset to the production of comparable data across Europe.
The approach regarding the current collection of data on cities will be the integrated use of the population grid from Census 2021 (the grid has been defined as a square grid cell of 1 kilometer area) for the update of the spatial units’ boundaries, exhaustive and sample surveys’ data produced by the NSI, data from administrative sources and the application of Small Area Estimation techniques.
The expected result of the project tasks would be an improved production and communication of statistics at subnational level, with high quality and emphasis on cities and their Functional Urban Areas, but also on the smaller cities and suburbs and the neighboring rural areas. These categories are directly related to the degree of urbanisation - a key variable in the sample questionnaires.
The project duration will be 24 months and will end in April 2024.
[1] Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/1130 of 2 July 2019 on the uniform conditions for the harmonised application of territorial typologies pursuant to Regulation (EC) No. 1059/2003 of the European Parliament and of the Council C/2019/4877 OJ L 179, 3.07.2019, p. 9-11.
