The future of Intrastat
Page updated on November 24, 2025
The aim of decreasing the burden on providers of statistical information began in 2012
In order to reduce the burden on providers of statistical information (PSIs), the EU Commission’s EEA committee and the Committee on International Trade Statistics approved the initiation of a plan in 2012. The proposition was that all Member States collect intra-EU export data, but that the internal import data is constructed based on the export data collected by other countries. The framework regulation on business statistics (EBS) entered into force on 1 January 2021, and the mandatory Intrastat micro data exchange entered into force one year after the basic regulation, that is, on 1 January 2022. The basic EBS regulation (EU 2019/2152) was published in the Official Journal on 17 December 2019. EU Member States have been exchanging company-specific data on EU goods exports monthly since the beginning of 2022, based on the EU Framework Regulation on Business Statistics.
Changes for the statistical year 2026
As of the statistical year 2026, the obligation to report intra-EU trade applies only to EU exports. The threshold value (€800 000) for reporting export statistics remains the same in 2026.
Customs will introduce microdata received from other EU Member States in the external trade statistics of EU imports starting from the reporting of the statistical year 2026. This will reduce the administrative burden on companies. From the statistical reference year 2026 onwards, the data collection on Intrastat imports will be replaced by the EU export declaration data collected by the EU Member States. In the future, the threshold limits for EU exports of Intrastat declarations in Finland will be determined annually so that the smallest Finnish companies are exempted from the Intrastat declaration obligation.
In Finland, the Intrastat declaration obligation for EU imports ends for all companies. The last Intrastat statistical declaration on EU imports is to be submitted for the period 2025/12. Those obliged to declare EU imports can correct their declaration data for the statistical year 2025 until 14 August 2026. When the obligation to declare Intrastat imports ends, a notification of changes is sent to companies in the form of a letter, which is sent to 4432 companies. The change will reduce the administrative reporting burden on Finnish companies by up to 70 per cent of the statistical reporting burden on EU goods trade. (link to the annual Intrastat changes)
The change has been implemented in cooperation with Statistics Finland. In November 2025, the change was discussed in the customer cooperation group for the forwarding sector and at the meetings of the Customer Advisory Committee of Finnish Customs.
Changes in the data content of import statistics for the statistical year 2026
The import statistics of the statistical year 2025 are based on Intrastat material collected by Customs, but as of the statistical year 2026, EU imports are published based on microdata collected by EU countries. The FOB-CIF statistical value factors are used to multiply the value data of microdata in order to obtain the statistical CIF value of imports from the FOB value of exports collected by another Member State. If an EU country’s microdata of a certain statistical month is missing, the data are imputed from the microdata of the partnering country’s latest month, using the adjustment factor of the most recent month. EU imports of natural gas from pipelines are still calculated based on Gasgrid's measurement data, so that the volumes of natural gas imports are not double in the statistics for Estonia and Latvia. EU imports of electric energy are still calculated based on Fingrid's measurement data. Qualitative changes to statistics:
- All country and goods distributions would change somewhat when it comes to EU imports.
- In the data collection of EU exports, the EU country that collected the information is the dispatch country, but the country where the goods originate from is the country of origin. In export declarations collected by another EU country, the country of origin is more often a non-EU country than in the current data collection on Intrastat imports by Finnish Customs, so some of the EU imports will be transferred to extra-EU trade by country of origin compared to the current situation.
- The biggest changes will be made to the mode of transport of imports, because exports in partnering countries have not always been declared as sea transport, even though imports arrive in Finland by sea.
- The microdata does not receive the location data of Finnish companies as in the current Intrastat import declaration, so the regional statistics on the international trade of goods published by Customs for imports would no longer be based on location-specific data for EU imports.
The schedule for the 2026 statistical year has been prepared according to the new method’s EU data exchange timelines, so the pre-release for the 2026 statistical year would be 40 days after the end of the statistical month. After the change, the preliminary statistical data are released around two days later than before. (Link to the release calendar)
According to the EU regulation on business statistics, the commodity code suppressions applied to microdata from another EU country is followed in statistical publications and the commodity code suppressions of imports already granted to Finnish companies are followed for the statistical year 2026. As a result, there will be more EU imports with commodity code suppressions, but the average monthly EU import of each new commodity code suppression is less than two million euros, i.e. there are no significant new suppressions on a monthly level. (Link to suppressions)
The statistical review of the received microdata will be carried out in such a way that in the future, statistical inquiries on EU imports will not be sent to companies.
Other methods studied in recent years
Customs' Statistics have studied different statistical methods with the aim of maintaining the current quality of the statistics and at the same time reducing the response burden of companies. In 2022–2023, a new statistical method was developed for Customs' compilation of statistics in an EU project, but for only ten per cent of companies, microdata received from other Member States would have replaced Intrastat import data almost directly on a company-specific basis. In 2024, another statistical method was developed by Customs' Statistics, which was similar to the one used by Denmark. From December 2023 onwards, the Tax Administration provided the necessary VIES data for this purpose more quickly than before, as the periodic VAT tax data (Danish method) was not available quickly enough in Finland. VIES data are updated by up to tens of per cent after the publication of the preliminary statistics, and the updating varies monthly. In November 2024, as a result of the second statistical method, the EU import statistics would be too incomplete in the preliminary statistics, and changes in the quality of the published statistical data were not acceptable (e.g. commodity code distribution, distribution of modes of transport). The matter was discussed together with Statistics Finland. A third statistical method was also further investigated, which would allow for a higher threshold for Intrastat imports, but this method did not enable a sufficiently significant reduction in the reporting burden for companies. The EU's goal has been to reduce the burden of Intrastat reporting by at least a third compared to 2020.
More information about the future of Intrastat:
Statistics Director Olli-Pekka Penttilä, olli-pekka.penttila@tulli.fi