DuckDB Eurostat Extension

August 3, 2026 · View on GitHub

What is this?

This is an extension for DuckDB for reading data from EUROSTAT database using SQL.

Eurostat is the official statistical office of the European Union, responsible for providing high-quality, comparable, and harmonised statistics on Europe’s economy, society, environment, and more.

Eurostat develops harmonised definitions, classifications and methodologies for the production of European official statistics, in cooperation with national statistical authorities. It calculates aggregate data for the European Union and eurozone, using data collected by national statistical authorities according to the harmonised standards. Eurostat makes European statistics freely available to decision‑makers and citizens via the Eurostat website, social media and other channels.

How do I get it?

Loading from community

The DuckDB EUROSTAT Extension is available as a signed community extension. See more details on its DuckDB CE web page.

To install and load it, you can run the following SQL commands in DuckDB:

INSTALL eurostat FROM community;
LOAD eurostat;

Building from source

This extension is based on the DuckDB extension template.

Example Usage

First, make sure to load the extension in your DuckDB session.

Then you can use the extension to read metadata and datasets from EUROSTAT database.

This is the list of available functions:

EUROSTAT_Endpoints

Returns the list of supported EUROSTAT API Endpoints.

SELECT provider_id, organization, description FROM EUROSTAT_Endpoints();

┌─────────────┬──────────────┬──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ provider_id │ organization │                     description                      │
│   varchar   │   varchar    │                       varchar                        │
├─────────────┼──────────────┼──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ ECFIN       │ DG ECFIN     │ Economic and Financial Affairs                       │
│ EMPL        │ DG EMPL      │ Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion             │
│ ESTAT       │ EUROSTAT     │ EUROSTAT database                                    │
│ GROW        │ DG GROW      │ Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs │
│ TAXUD       │ DG TAXUD     │ Taxation and Customs Union                           │
└─────────────┴──────────────┴──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

EUROSTAT_Dataflows

Returns info of the dataflows provided by EUROSTAT Providers.

SELECT * FROM EUROSTAT_Dataflows();
SELECT * FROM EUROSTAT_Dataflows(providers = ['ESTAT','ECFIN'], language := 'en');

You can also filter by specific dataflows:

SELECT
	provider_id,
	dataflow_id,
	class,
	version,
	label
FROM
	EUROSTAT_Dataflows(providers = ['ESTAT'], dataflows = ['DEMO_R_D2JAN'], language := 'de')
;

┌─────────────┬──────────────┬─────────┬─────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ provider_id │  dataflow_id │  class  │ version │                               label                               │
│   varchar   │   varchar    │ varchar │ varchar │                              varchar                              │
├─────────────┼──────────────┼─────────┼─────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ ESTAT       │ DEMO_R_D2JAN │ dataset │ 1.0     │ Bevölkerung am 1. Januar nach Alter, Geschlecht und NUTS-2-Region │
└─────────────┴──────────────┴─────────┴─────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

EUROSTAT_DataStructure

Returns information of the data structure of an EUROSTAT Dataflow.

SELECT
	provider_id,
	dataflow_id,
	position,
	dimension,
	concept
FROM
	EUROSTAT_DataStructure('ESTAT', 'DEMO_R_D2JAN', language := 'en')
;

┌─────────────┬──────────────┬──────────┬─────────────┬─────────────────────────────────┐
│ provider_id │ dataflow_id  │ position │  dimension  │             concept             │
│   varchar   │   varchar    │  int32   │   varchar   │             varchar             │
├─────────────┼──────────────┼──────────┼─────────────┼─────────────────────────────────┤
│ ESTAT       │ DEMO_R_D2JAN │        1 │ freq        │ Time frequency                  │
│ ESTAT       │ DEMO_R_D2JAN │        2 │ unit        │ Unit of measure                 │
│ ESTAT       │ DEMO_R_D2JAN │        3 │ sex         │ Sex                             │
│ ESTAT       │ DEMO_R_D2JAN │        4 │ age         │ Age class                       │
│ ESTAT       │ DEMO_R_D2JAN │        5 │ geo         │ Geopolitical entity (reporting) │
│ ESTAT       │ DEMO_R_D2JAN │       -1 │ geo_level   │ NUTS classification level       │
│ ESTAT       │ DEMO_R_D2JAN │        6 │ time_period │ Time                            │
└─────────────┴──────────────┴──────────┴─────────────┴─────────────────────────────────┘

geo_level is a dimension that is not part of the dataflow source, but it is computed based on the geo dimension values. See the function EUROSTAT_GetGeoLevelFromGeoCode below for more details.

EUROSTAT_DataDictionary

Returns the dictionary of codes and values of a given coded variable from Eurostat.

SELECT
	code,
	value
FROM
	EUROSTAT_DataDictionary('cities', language := 'en')
;

┌─────────┬────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  code   │                   value                    │
│ varchar │                  varchar                   │
├─────────┼────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ AL001C  │ Tirana                                     │
│ AT      │ Austria                                    │
│ AT001C  │ Wien (greater city)                        │
│ AT001F  │ Wien                                       │
│ ·       │    ·                                       │
│ ·       │    ·                                       │
│ ·       │    ·                                       │
│ UK135F  │ Derry & Strabane Local Government District │
│ XK001C  │ Prishtinë/Priština                         │
└─────────┴────────────────────────────────────────────┘

EUROSTAT_Read

Reads the dataset of an EUROSTAT Dataflow.

SELECT * FROM EUROSTAT_Read('ESTAT', 'DEMO_R_D2JAN') LIMIT 5;

┌─────────┬─────────┬─────────┬─────────┬─────────┬───────────┬─────────────┬───────────────────┐
│  freq   │  unit   │   sex   │   age   │   geo   │ geo_level │ TIME_PERIOD │ observation_value │
│ varchar │ varchar │ varchar │ varchar │ varchar │  varchar  │   varchar   │      double       │
├─────────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┼───────────┼─────────────┼───────────────────┤
│ A       │ NR      │ F       │ TOTAL   │ AL      │ country   │ 2000        │         1526762.0 │
│ A       │ NR      │ F       │ TOTAL   │ AL      │ country   │ 2001        │         1535822.0 │
│ A       │ NR      │ F       │ TOTAL   │ AL      │ country   │ 2002        │         1532563.0 │
│ A       │ NR      │ F       │ TOTAL   │ AL      │ country   │ 2003        │         1526180.0 │
│ A       │ NR      │ F       │ TOTAL   │ AL      │ country   │ 2004        │         1520481.0 │
└─────────┴─────────┴─────────┴─────────┴─────────┴───────────┴─────────────┴───────────────────┘

To keep Eurostat observation flags (e.g. e, b, p, f) in a separate column, add include_flags := true:

SELECT
	geo,
	time_period,
	observation_value,
	observation_flag
FROM
	EUROSTAT_Read('ESTAT', 'road_pa_buscoa', include_flags := true)
WHERE
	observation_flag IS NOT NULL
LIMIT 5
;

┌─────────┬─────────────┬───────────────────┬──────────────────┐
│   geo   │ time_period │ observation_value │ observation_flag │
│ varchar │   varchar   │      double       │     varchar      │
├─────────┼─────────────┼───────────────────┼──────────────────┤
│ HU      │ 2024        │           691.787 │ p                │
│ MT      │ 2013        │              NULL │ m                │
│ MT      │ 2014        │              NULL │ m                │
│ MT      │ 2015        │              NULL │ m                │
│ MT      │ 2016        │              NULL │ m                │
└─────────┴─────────────┴───────────────────┴──────────────────┘

Extension supports pushdown of T-SQL filters on dimensions, which are encoded and sent to the EUROSTAT API to filter the data before being loaded into DuckDB.

EUROSTAT API only supports filtering on dimensions with equality conditions (e.g. WHERE geo = 'DE') or IN conditions (e.g. WHERE geo IN ('DE', 'FR')). Other types of filters (e.g. WHERE geo LIKE 'D%') are not supported and will be evaluated locally in DuckDB after loading the data.

Time filters (e.g. WHERE time_period >= '2000' AND time_period <= '2010') are also supported and will be encoded as range filters in the EUROSTAT API.

The geo_level dimension is not part of the dataflow source, but it is computed based on the geo dimension values. You can filter on it as well (e.g. WHERE geo_level = 'country'), but it will be evaluated locally in DuckDB after loading the data.

EUROSTAT_GetGeoLevelFromGeoCode

Scalar function that returns the level for a GEO code in the NUTS classification or if it is considered aggregates.

SELECT EUROSTAT_GetGeoLevelFromGeoCode('DE');        -- returns 'country'
SELECT EUROSTAT_GetGeoLevelFromGeoCode('DE1');       -- returns 'nuts1'
SELECT EUROSTAT_GetGeoLevelFromGeoCode('DE12');      -- returns 'nuts2'
SELECT EUROSTAT_GetGeoLevelFromGeoCode('DE123');     -- returns 'nuts3'
SELECT EUROSTAT_GetGeoLevelFromGeoCode('DE_DEL1');   -- returns 'city'
SELECT EUROSTAT_GetGeoLevelFromGeoCode('EU27_2020'); -- returns 'aggregate'

This scalar function is used by the EUROSTAT_Read function to add the geo_level dimension as a normal column.

The supported levels are:

aggregate
country
nuts1
nuts2
nuts3
city

See more details about geo_level here.

Supported Functions and Documentation

The full list of functions and their documentation is available in the function reference

How do I build it?

Dependencies

You need a recent version of CMake (3.5) and a C++14 compatible compiler.

We also highly recommend that you install Ninja which you can select when building by setting the GEN=ninja environment variable.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/ahuarte47/duckdb-eurostat
cd duckdb-eurostat
make release

You can then invoke the built DuckDB (with the extension statically linked)

./build/release/duckdb

Please see the Makefile for more options, or the extension template documentation for more details.

Running the tests

Different tests can be created for DuckDB extensions. The primary way of testing DuckDB extensions should be the SQL tests in ./test/sql. These SQL tests can be run using:

make test

Installing the deployed binaries

To install your extension binaries from S3, you will need to do two things. Firstly, DuckDB should be launched with the allow_unsigned_extensions option set to true. How to set this will depend on the client you're using. Some examples:

CLI:

duckdb -unsigned

Python:

con = duckdb.connect(':memory:', config={'allow_unsigned_extensions' : 'true'})

NodeJS:

db = new duckdb.Database(':memory:', {"allow_unsigned_extensions": "true"});

Secondly, you will need to set the repository endpoint in DuckDB to the HTTP url of your bucket + version of the extension you want to install. To do this run the following SQL query in DuckDB:

SET custom_extension_repository='bucket.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/<your_extension_name>/latest';

Note that the /latest path will allow you to install the latest extension version available for your current version of DuckDB. To specify a specific version, you can pass the version instead.

After running these steps, you can install and load your extension using the regular INSTALL/LOAD commands in DuckDB:

INSTALL eurostat;
LOAD eurostat;

Enjoy!