Eurostat Policy Indicators

The EU Policy Indicators datasets provide a consolidated view of Europe’s economic, social, and sustainability performance across the European Union and member states.

The EU policy indicators umbrella includes five major statistical frameworks:

1. Euro Indicators
2. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
3. The European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR)
4. Circular Economy indicators, and
5. The Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP).

These datasets combine official statistics on economic performance, labour markets, inflation, trade, housing, inequality, environment, resource use, and social inclusion. In practice, that gives users a broad view of how economies and societies are changing over time.

1. Euro Indicators

The Euro Indicators Database provides high-frequency monthly and quarterly macroeconomic indicators covering:

• inflation
• trade
• labour markets
• housing
• industrial activity
• financial markets
• GDP and national accounts
• business sentiment.

The framework is linked to the Principal European Economic Indicators (PEEIs), which are used by the European Commission and European Central Bank to monitor economic performance, monetary policy, and economic convergence across Europe.

The datasets support:

• economic forecasting
• market intelligence
• risk monitoring
• policy analysis
• econometric modelling.

A key feature is the inclusion of vintage datasets, which preserve historical snapshots of indicators such as GDP, unemployment, and industrial production as originally published, enabling revision analysis and back-testing of forecasting models.

2. Sustainable Development Goals (SDG)

The Sustainable Development Goals datasets track EU and member state progress against the United Nations 17 SDGs across:

• economic
• social
• environmental
• governance outcomes.

The data includes indicators covering:

• poverty
• health
• education
• climate
• energy
• biodiversity
• employment
• housing
• transport
• innovation.

The framework supports sustainability benchmarking and long-term impact analysis at EU, national, regional (NUTS 2 and NUTS 3), and urbanisation levels. Recent reporting highlights strong EU progress in employment, education, and inequality reduction, while environmental indicators relating to biodiversity, water stress, and marine ecosystems remain areas of concern.

3. European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR)

The EPSR datasets monitor social and employment conditions across the EU using a social scoreboard aligned to 20 principles supporting:

• equal opportunity
• fair working conditions
• social inclusion
• stronger social protection systems.

Key indicators include:

• education and digital skills
• employment and unemployment
• income inequality
• housing affordability
• healthcare access
• childcare participation
• poverty reduction.

The framework enables comparison across countries and regions using trusted Eurostat sources such as the Labour Force Survey (LFS) and EU-SILC.

The EPSR framework is divided into three key dimensions:

• Equal opportunities, covering education, digital skills, labour market participation, gender equality, and income inequality. Indicators include early school leavers, digital competency levels, NEET rates, gender employment gaps, and income distribution measures.
• Fair working conditions, focusing on employment quality, unemployment, job security, household income, and labour market mobility. Metrics include employment and unemployment rates, long-term unemployment, job tenure, transitions from temporary to permanent work, and in-work poverty.
• Social protection and inclusion, measuring poverty, housing affordability, healthcare access, childcare participation, disability employment gaps, and the effectiveness of social transfers in reducing poverty. The framework also tracks vulnerable populations, including children and older citizens.

The datasets are available at EU, national, regional (NUTS 2), and urbanisation levels, allowing policymakers, researchers, and organisations to assess social progress, benchmark outcomes, identify emerging social challenges, and support evidence-based policy development across Europe.

4. Circular Economy

The Eurostat Circular Economy datasets provide a framework for measuring Europe’s transition from a traditional linear economy to a more sustainable and regenerative circular economy model. Developed by the European Commission, the monitoring framework tracks how efficiently materials and resources are used, reused, recycled, and reintegrated into the economy, while also measuring the environmental, economic, and social benefits of circularity.

The framework is designed to assess both the direct and indirect impacts of circular economy practices, including

• reduced material consumption,
• lower greenhouse gas emissions,
• improved resource security, and
• increased economic resilience.

It uses 11 core statistical indicators grouped across five thematic areas:

• production and consumption,
• waste management,
• secondary raw materials,
• competitiveness and innovation, and
• global sustainability and resilience.

The data covers key measures such as

• material consumption,
• waste generation,
• recycling rates,
• circular material use,
• trade in recyclable raw materials,
• investments in recycling and repair industries,
• circular economy patents,
• greenhouse gas emissions, and
• EU dependency on imported materials.

Together, these indicators provide insight into how effectively the EU is reducing waste, extending product life cycles, improving recycling systems, and decoupling economic growth from resource use.

The datasets are primarily sourced from official Eurostat statistics, alongside contributions from the Joint Research Centre (JRC), DG GROW, and the European Patent Office. They support policymakers, researchers, and businesses in monitoring progress toward EU sustainability, climate neutrality, resource efficiency, and long-term economic resilience objectives.

5. Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP)

The Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP) datasets provide a framework for monitoring economic stability and identifying potential macroeconomic risks across European Union member states. As part of the European Semester (the EU’s system for coordinating economic and social policies) the MIP aims to detect emerging imbalances early, prevent harmful economic developments, and support corrective policy action where imbalances already exist.

The framework is built around a scoreboard of annual statistical indicators designed to monitor both short-term economic deterioration and the long-term accumulation of structural imbalances.

The scoreboard currently includes 13 headline indicators across three core areas:

• external imbalances and competitiveness,
• internal imbalances, and
• employment conditions.

These indicators are complemented by a broader set of auxiliary indicators that provide additional economic context and help inform policy responses.

The external imbalances and competitiveness indicators assess factors such as current account balances, international investment positions, export performance, labour costs, and exchange rate movements. Internal imbalance indicators focus on government debt, household and corporate debt levels, credit growth, and house price inflation. Employment indicators measure labour market health through unemployment rates and labour force participation. Many indicators include predefined thresholds that help identify elevated macroeconomic risk levels requiring further analysis.

The MIP datasets also include auxiliary measures covering economic growth, productivity, inflation, banking sector resilience, housing affordability, innovation, poverty, and social exclusion. Together, these datasets support policymakers, economists, researchers, and financial institutions in assessing economic vulnerabilities, monitoring competitiveness, and strengthening the long-term resilience and stability of EU economies.