Featured data: Open Data on business climates

Creating a business friendly environment for existing small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and potential entrepreneurs is one of the European Union's main objectives. Also on a national level, having a favourable business climate is often seen as an important factor to create employment and to drive economic growth. What can Open Data tell us about business climates in Europe?

This dataset provides some insights in the expectations and trust of Spanish companies if it comes to the economic outlook in their country. This dataset is updated once each quarter, as it is based on a quarterly survey. The expectations regarding the business climate are often related to consumer sentiment. An example regarding consumer sentiment on a city-level comes from Dublin, and is based on the Dublin Economic Monitor. The graph below shows the development of consumer sentiment in both Dublin and Ireland as a whole.

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While the above datasets include data for specific countries or cities, this dataset allows for comparisons between countries. It provides data about the business ownership rate, the growth of companies, and prospective and young entrepreneurs. Many young entrepreneurs and a positive attitude towards entrepreneurship are an indication of a favourable investment climate.

The business climate impacts the number of business registrations. Business registrations, as indicated by VAT registrations, can be explored for instance in this dataset. This dataset shows the amount of VAT registrations per sector in Ireland, as illustrated below.

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Would you like to know more about business climates on a national (e.g. in the Netherlands) or on a European level? Explore it yourself by taking a look in our database!