The Directorate General for Economic and Financial Affairs of the European Commission conducts regular harmonised surveys for different sectors of the economies in the European Union (EU) and in the applicant countries. They are addressed to representatives of the industry (manufacturing), services, retail trade and construction sectors, as well as to consumers. These surveys allow comparisons among different countries' business cycles and have become an indispensable tool for monitoring the evolution of the EU and the euro area economies, as well as monitoring developments in the applicant countries.
For details on the change in naming conventions, you can find a one-to-one correspondence between the new and old naming conventions in the ECS mapping file.
The Business and consumer survey (BCS) database comprises the following surveys:
1.Industry Survey
- Monthly questions: Focus on production levels, order book status, inventory of finished goods, perceived economic uncertainty, selling prices, and employment trends.
- Quarterly questions: Address factors limiting production, production capacity, the development of overall and export order books, months of assured production, capacity utilization, and competitive positioning.
- Biannual questions: Inquire about investment activities, including the structure of and factors driving investment (with additional annual questions).
2. Services Survey
- Monthly questions: Cover the business climate, demand levels, perceived economic uncertainty, employment, and selling prices.
- Quarterly questions: Examine factors limiting business activities and capacity utilization.
- Biannual questions: Explore investment activities, including the structure of and factors driving investment (with additional annual questions).
3.Retail Trade Survey
- Monthly questions: Assess business activity, inventory levels, orders placed with suppliers, perceived economic uncertainty, employment, and selling prices.
- Quarterly questions: Include additional insights specific to retail trade.
4.Construction Survey
- Monthly questions: Address building activity and its limiting factors, order book status, employment, perceived economic uncertainty, and prices charged.
- Quarterly questions: Focus on the operating time ensured by the current backlog of orders.
5.Consumer Survey
- Monthly questions: Examine the financial situation of households, perceived economic uncertainty, the general economic situation, price trends, unemployment, major purchases, and savings behavior.
- Quarterly questions: Explore intentions related to purchasing a car, buying or building a home, and making home improvements.
6.EU country Weights for the following sectors:
-Construction
-Consumer
-Manufacturing
-Retail Trade
-Services
The data are published as balances, i.e. the differences between positive and negative answers (in percentage points of total answers), as index, as confidence indicators (arithmetic average of balances), unadjusted (N) and seasonally adjusted (S). More information can be found on ECFIN website.
Details on methodology, questionnaire and classifications can be found here.
Monthly and quarterly.
For information about the naming convention (series key dimensions and metadata), refer to the ECS underlying DSD (ECB_SUR2) maintained by the ECB.
Details on Collection and Production of the data can be found here.
ECS - ECFIN Business and Consumer Surveys
Directorate‑General for Economic and Financial Affairs: ECFIN
The detailed Business and Consumer Survey results are published two working days before the end of each month.
Data on consumer inflation perception and expectation are published every quarter.
Country weights are published once a year, by the end of January.
Download the series catalogue containing a full list of series and associated metadata of the dataset ECS in CSV format (zipped)