Definition: Adjustments

External trade

Adjustments are carried out on the trade statistics of countries in case of incomplete coverage due to the exclusion of low-value items in customs-based systems or of small traders and non-responding traders in enterprise-based systems, to improve the quality of the statistics and compensate for the negative effects of non-response and thresholds. Nevertheless adjustments do not avoid inconsistencies between the statistics of the various Member States, because of the lack of methodological harmonisation. Moreover, five Member States (France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal) do not adjust the data forwarded to Eurostat.