EFB can finally reveal the countries that will participate in the EU funded programme to gather statistics on family business. Launched in 2015, the European Commission’s call for tender on ‘Statistics for Family Businesses’ is finally under way.

Launched in 2015, the European Commission’s call aims, ‘to provide policy-makers and relevant stakeholders for credible, comparable and systematic information and indicators on the role of the family businesses in national economies and to offer usable and practical information to stakeholders for their decision making.’[1]

For EFB, what makes this project particularly significant is that respective official statistical offices (national, federal or regional) must be involved in each selected country. This breaks away from the majority of available worldwide family business data, which has been compiled by private institutions or universities. We hope that this project is the start of regular annual statistical compilations, by EU Member States on this business sector.

The selected countries are Denmark, Malta, Italy (Veneto), the Netherlands, Poland, and Bulgaria.  EFB is excited by this project as it is the first of its kind in Europe.