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1. Existing administrative units within the Member States shall constitute the first criterion used for the definition of territorial units. To this end, ‘administrative unit’ shall mean a geographical area with an administrative authority that has the power to take administrative or policy decisions for that area within the legal and institutional framework of the Member State.

2. In order to establish the relevant NUTS level in which a given class of administrative units in a Member State is to be classified, the average size of this class of administrative units in the Member State shall lie within the following population thresholds: Level Minimum Maximum NUTS 1 3 million 7 million NUTS 2 800 000 3 million NUTS 3 150 000 800 000 If the population of a whole Member State is below the minimum threshold for a given NUTS level, the whole Member State shall be one NUTS territorial unit for this level.

3. For the purpose of this Regulation, the population of a territorial unit shall consist of those persons who have their usual place of residence in this area.

4. The existing administrative units used for the NUTS classification are set out in Annex II. The Commission shall be empowered to adopt delegated acts in accordance with Article 7a to amend Annex II on the basis of the changes in the administrative units that have been communicated to it by the Member State concerned in accordance with Article 5(1).

5. If for a given level of NUTS no administrative units of a suitable scale exist in a Member State, in accordance with the criteria referred to in paragraph 2, this NUTS level shall be constituted by aggregating an appropriate number of existing smaller contiguous administrative units. This aggregation shall take into consideration such relevant criteria as geographical, socio-economic, historical, cultural or environmental circumstances. The resulting aggregated units shall hereinafter be referred to as ‘non-administrative units’. The size of the non-administrative units in a Member State for a given NUTS level shall lie within the population thresholds referred to in paragraph 2.

Some non-administrative units may, however, deviate from those thresholds because of particular geographical, socioeconomic, historical, cultural or environmental circumstances, especially in the islands and the outermost regions.