The Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) were drawn up by Eurostat in order to define territorial units for the production of regional statistics across the European Union. The NUTS classification has been used in EU legislation since 1988, but it was only in 2003 that the EU Member States, the European Parliament and the Commission established the NUTS regions within a legal framework (Regulation (EC) No 1059/2003). The Irish NUTS 3 regions comprise the eight Regional Authorities established under the Local Government Act, 1991 (Regional Authorities) (Establishment) Order, 1993 which came into operation on January 1st 1994. The NUTS 2 regions, which were proposed by Government and agreed to by Eurostat in 1999, are groupings of the Regional Authorities.