Brussels, 25/11/2002 (Agence Europe) - Eurostat, the Statistical Office of the European Communities, published the 2002 edition of the statistical directory on Friday of the European Union's 211 regions and the 55 regions of the candidate countries. The directory supplies maps and data by region on the population, the GD, unemployment, the environment and urbanism. It studies certain economic sectors and topics (agriculture, transport, scientific and technological development, company structure).
To take the example of the growth in the population, Eurostat's report stresses that "migration has become the decisive factor of still positive but slow growth". 92 of the 112 Nuts 2 regions of the European Union recorded as natural negative growth in 1999, but "thanks to net positive migration, total growth was only however negative in only half of them". This compensation "is not to be found in candidate countries: 41 of the 55 regions present a negative natural growth and 3 regions recorded total negative growth".
The highest rate of nativity are in three of the four French overseas departments, in Flevoland, the Netherlands (15.8 for 1000 inhabitants), Inner London and the regions of Leicestershire, Rutland and Northamptonshire, the Spanish region of Ceulta y Melilla (15.5%), and Ile-de-France.. The EU regions with a rate of nativity below 8.4% are main located in Germany (almost all the eastern part), the North and centre of Italy, and the north of Spain. The rate of nativity is low in Bulgaria, in the regions of Praha (Czech Republic), Latvia, Bucuresti (Romania) and Bratislavsky (Slovak Republic). The level of net immigration (difference between immigration and emigration) for EU regions was 2.5% in 1999 but was negative for candidate countries (-1.3%). Regions where migration is positie in the broadest sense are the sourht of the United Kingdom and France, as well as the centre and the North of Italy. Almost a quarter of the EU regions chalked up a negative migratory figure in 1999. The five regions which lost most inhabitants due to migration were in Italy (Calabria and Campania, with level of -7.8% and 7.5%); Germany (HALLE/ -6.4% and Dassau: -6.3%) and Finland I (Itä Suomi: -6.3%. Other regions displaying migratory trends that were strongly in the negative were in the south of Italy, North of France, the centre and East of Germany, the centre and north of Sweden and Finland. The first region of a candidate country to igure on this list was in 17th plae: Severozapaden in Bulgaria (-4).