Regional Delimitation in Portugal

In May 1986, the NUTS units (the European term which designated the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) were defined so as to standardise the production of statistics in Portugal in the area of regional planning and development, and to make them compatible with the aggregated territories that serve as the basis for regional community statistics.

The solution achieved by the resolution which created the NUTS was the result of an extremely complicated and lengthy process given that, in preceding years, in each ministry, there was some degree of regional decentralisation for its services, but based on distinct territorial bases, corresponding to the criteria belonging to each activity.

Naturally, each of these intended that the statistical information produced by the National Statistics Institute, when district delimitation was abandoned, would be whatever was most suitable for its respective sector. The Ministry of Planning and Territorial Administration, given the competencies it had in terms of development,ended up winning in terms of its territorial proposal, defending the five areas of activity of the Regional Coordination Commissions and the municipality groupings as being adequate places for synthesising regional interventions in continental Portugal.

There were established, then, in accord with community norms, three levels of aggregation of the base units – the municipalities:

- level I, comprising three units: the Continent, and the Autonomous Regions of The Açores and Madeira;
- level II, comprising seven units: the five areas of activity of the Regional Coordination Commissions and the Autonomous Regions of Açores and Madeira;
- level III, comprising 29 units, two of which relate to the Autonomous Regions of Açores and Madeira.

Although, for the definition of NUTS, many inter-ministry negotiations took place between a number of ministries, it was not possible to reach definitive agreement with the Ministry of Agriculture, which was already largely regionalised into already constituted and installed agricultural regions and zones.

In effect, it was only three years later, in 1989, that a new resolution4 harmonising the regional delimitations used by Planning and by Agriculture came into effect ; for this purpose, adjustments were made to the NUTS IIs of Lisboa e Vale do Tejo, and Alentejo (with the Ponte de Sôr municipality passing to Alentejo).

In compensation, the intention of the Ministry of Agriculture to integrate Entre Douro and Vouga in Centro Region was not pushed forward. The various adjustments made within NUTS II to ensure that NUTS III should correspond to the agricultural zones, or to the sum of them, has resulted in an increase of NUTS III units from 27 to 28 in the continental territory.

Gertrudes Guerreiro - Universidade de Évora, Departamento de Economia
Conceição Rego - Universidade de Évora, Departamento de Economia