The European Commission published in the Official Journal of the European Union, OJEU, on November, 17th, 2008, the codified version of Decision 2008/861/EC setting the list of European ports for the purposes of statistical returns in respect of carriage of goods and passengers by sea.

Given that Commission Decision 98/385/EC of May, 13th, 1998, on rules for implementing Council Directive 95/64/EC on statistical returns in respect of carriage of goods and passengers by sea has been substantially amended several times, there is the need to codify such Decision, in the interests of clarity and rationality.

Therefore, Commission had the mission to draw up a list of ports, coded and classified by country and maritime coastal area. This list, as referred in Annex I of  Decision 2008/861/EC, includes the statistical ports and sub-ports, classified in alphabetical order for each Member State.

Information included in the EUROSTAT list of European Ports

• Country: ISO alpha 2 standard code
• Maritime coastal area in which the port is situated (Annex IV to Directive 95/64/EC)
• Whether it has been modified since Decision 2000/363/EC
• Name of the port
• Code (alphabetical) of the UN/LOCODE or code (numerical) temporarily allocated by Eurostat to ports without a LOCODE
• National Statistical Group: for ports that are not statistical ports, the national statistical group (nat. stat. group) is the code of the statistical port in which this port is included
• Statistical port
• National Code allocated to the statistical port in the national statistics of the Member State in
• which it is situated