Regional Projections for the EU at the NUTS3-Level

Philipp Ueffing , European Commission
Alfredo Alessandrini, European Commission - Joint Research Centre
Fabrizio Natale, European Commission Joint Research Centre
Christoph Deuster, European Commission - Joint Research Centre

Regional population projections for the EU are a relevant for the research and policy communities. However, they are methodologically challenging given significant regional demographic heterogeneity and data gaps. This paper presents a comprehensive revision of Eurostat’s NUTS3-level projection methodology. It outlines a new framework, which is linked to Eurostat’s forthcoming 2026 national-level projections, while adopting a 5x5 (5-year age group, 5-year interval) cohort-component accounting framework to better align with the availability and robustness of Eurostat regional data. The main update is the use of recently developed synthetic migration approaches, applied to create a consistent estimation of six directional migration flows (in/out for internal, intra-EU, and extra-EU), especially where observed data is scarce. This method generates region-specific, age-structured flows by first scaling model-based flow profiles to observed or estimated aggregate migration flow totals, and then mathematically adjusting them to match the residual net migration derived from the demographic balancing equation for each cohort. This provides a consistent solution for data-sparse environments, though its accuracy depends on the quality of the population estimates and the model schedules used. The updated methodology also includes an expanded range of regional projection scenarios to address demographic uncertainty. This paper details the complete methodology, its rationale, and limitations. We plan to present expected results including the expanded range of scenarios as well as an evaluation of the synthetic approach from back-testing and testing on against available country-level regional projections.

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 Presented in Session P79. New European National and Subnational Population Projections: Implications for EU Policy Planning