Inhoudsopgave
Inhoud
- 01Wat is NACE?Een gemeenschappelijke taal om te beschrijven wat een bedrijf doet.5 min
- 02Wie beheert NACE?Eurostat, een verordening van de Raad en 27 nationale bureaus voor de statistiek.4 min
- 03Waarom NACE bestaatVergelijkbaarheid, bedrijfsregisters, belastingadministratie, onderzoek.5 min
- 04Hoe NACE is opgebouwdSectie → afdeling → groep → klasse, en het vijfde nationale cijfer.6 min
- 05Herziningen en de sprong naar Herz. 2.1Hoe NACE door de jaren heen verandert, en wat er is verschoven tussen Herz. 2 en Herz. 2.1.5 min
- 06Nationale variantenNAF, WZ, CAE, SBI, ATECO, SKD — en hoe ze allemaal gerelateerd zijn aan NACE.6 min
- 07Een code lezen en toewijzenDe hoofdactiviteitenregel, top-down besluitvorming, veelvoorkomende valkuilen.7 min
- 08NACE gebruiken met moderne hulpmiddelenEen korte rondleiding langs online tools, AI-assistenten en downloads — met verwijzingen voor ontwikkelaars.4 min
Annexes
- ASources & attributionEurostat reuse, national statistical institutes and reference bodies.Appendix A
- BInstitutions & data sourcesEuropean and national authorities referenced across the handbook.Appendix B
- CNational & EU classificationsActivity classifications aligned with NACE Rev. 2.1 at the class level.Appendix C
- DGlossaryEvery classification, EU body and NSI — plain-language definitions.Appendix D
Appendix
Sources & Attribution
Where every claim in this handbook comes from, how it was derived, and how you may reuse it.
A.1Primary source
This handbook is a plain-language companion to the official Eurostat NACE manual. Every substantive statement — the four-level structure, the anchoring rules, the revision history, the classification principles — is derived from a single primary source published by the European Commission's statistical office.
- NACE Rev. 2.1 — Statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community
- Eurostat, Manuals and guidelines series, 2025 edition. Publication code KS-GQ-24-007-EN-N. ISBN 978-92-68-19443-4. doi:10.2785/4407311. · ec.europa.eu
- Ramon — Eurostat's classifications server
- Machine-readable NACE code lists, explanatory notes, and correspondence tables between NACE Rev. 2, Rev. 2.1, ISIC Rev. 4, and ISIC Rev. 5. · ec.europa.eu
A.2Legal basis
NACE is not a suggestion. It is EU statistical law, and any handbook that speaks to "who governs it" must cite the acts that establish it. Two instruments matter:
- Regulation (EC) No 1893/2006
- The European Parliament and Council regulation that established NACE Rev. 2 as the mandatory classification for European business statistics. · eur-lex.europa.eu
- Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2023/137
- Amends Regulation (EC) No 1893/2006 to introduce NACE Rev. 2.1 with effect from reference year 2025. · eur-lex.europa.eu
A.3International alignment
NACE is the European view of a global taxonomy. Its top two levels are aligned by treaty with the United Nations Statistics Division's ISIC. Cross-border comparisons and correspondence tables both defer to these UN publications.
- ISIC Rev. 4
- International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities, Rev. 4. United Nations, 2008. Series M, No. 4/Rev. 4. · unstats.un.org
- ISIC Rev. 5
- Draft international standard aligned with NACE Rev. 2.1. Adopted by the UN Statistical Commission in 2023. · unstats.un.org
A.4National variants
Where this handbook names national classifications — CAE (Portugal), NAF (France), WZ (Germany), SBI (Netherlands), and their equivalents across the EU27 — the underlying code lists come from each Member State's national statistical institute. NACEBridge mirrors those lists and keeps them aligned with the Eurostat backbone.
- Portugal — CAE Rev. 4
- Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE).
- France — NAF Rev. 2 / 2025
- Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (INSEE).
- Germany — WZ 2025
- Statistisches Bundesamt (Destatis).
- Netherlands — SBI 2025
- Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek (CBS).
- All other EU Member States
- Respective national statistical institutes, mirrored via NACEBridge Market Intelligence.
A.5Reuse and license
The primary source is reused under the European Commission's reuse policy. Commission Decision 2011/833/EU allows reuse of documents produced by the Commission and Eurostat for both commercial and non-commercial purposes, provided the source is acknowledged and the meaning is not distorted.
This handbook — the plain-language text, the illustrations, the code samples, and the software that renders it — is © TΣKSOMΛ Technologies. It is distributed free of charge under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence (CC BY 4.0). You may copy, redistribute, translate, or adapt it, provided you credit NACEBridge and preserve the citation to Eurostat.
- Commission Decision 2011/833/EU
- Reuse of Commission documents. Recital and articles govern the reuse of the Eurostat manual quoted throughout this handbook. · eur-lex.europa.eu
- CC BY 4.0
- Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International — applies to the derivative text, layout, and code of this handbook. · creativecommons.org
A.6Editorial method
The eight chapters were written by re-reading the corresponding sections of KS-GQ-24-007-EN-N and producing a shorter, plainer restatement in the same order the manual presents them. No claim in the body of any chapter is invented; every claim is traceable to the page range printed at the foot of that chapter ("Source: §… pp. …").
Where the primary source is ambiguous or silent — for example, on how to use NACE programmatically, or on the practical mechanics of cross-border code conversion — the handbook says so explicitly, and cites NACEBridge's own API documentation instead of the manual.
Translations into the 22 other official EU languages were produced by machine translation (Google Gemini via the Lovable AI Gateway) and marked with a translationStatus banner. English is the source of truth; where a translation and the English disagree, the English wins.
A.7How to cite this handbook
If you quote or paraphrase this handbook in a research paper, policy note, or software documentation, please cite it as:
- Suggested citation
- TΣKSOMΛ Technologies (2026). The NACE Handbook — a plain-language companion to NACE Rev. 2.1. NACEBridge, first edition. https://nacebridge.eu/handbook
- Underlying source (always cite alongside)
- Eurostat (2025). NACE Rev. 2.1 — Statistical classification of economic activities in the European Community. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union. KS-GQ-24-007-EN-N.
A.8Corrections and contact
If you spot a paraphrase that materially differs from the primary source, an outdated legal reference, or a broken citation link, please tell us. Corrections are applied to the master English source, then re-translated into the other locales in the same release.
- Corrections
- handbook@nacebridge.eu
- Reuse questions
- See the CC BY 4.0 licence link above.