The institutional units are the elementary economic units of the national accounts. These units are entitled to own assets, to incur liabilities, to engage in economic activities and to carry out transactions with other units. The institutional sectors group together the institutional units which have a similar type of economic behaviour as defined by their function and their main activity.

Five main institutional sectors form the national economy: Non-financial corporations (S11), Financial corporations (S12), General government (S13), Households (S14), Non-profit institutions serving households (S15). The non-resident units engaged in transactions or having other economic links with resident institutional units are grouped in what is called the Rest of the world (S2).

The national accounts produce a set of accounts for the various institutional sectors.

The current accounts - production account, generation of income account, allocation of primary income account, secondary distribution of income account, redistribution of income in kind account and use of income account - are flow accounts. They are used to obtain the following balancing items : value added, operating surplus and mixed income, balance of primary incomes, disposable income, adjusted disposable income, saving.

The capital account records the acquisitions less disposals of non-financial assets and the capital transfers received and paid. This account enables to determine the extent to which acquisitions less disposals of non-financial assets have been financed out of saving and capital transfers. Its balancing item is the net lending (+) / net borrowing (-)(B9NF).

The gross balancing items of the current accounts and of the capital accounts for the total economy are the major aggregates of the national accounts: gross domestic product, gross national income, gross national disposable income, gross national saving, net lending (+)/net borrowing (-) of the Nation.

Net balances are derived from gross balances by subtracting the consumption of fixed capital.

These accounts are completed by the financial account, the other changes in assets accounts and the balance sheets.

Warning

In 2016, the State’s capital expenditure on military equipment has been revised upwards by 1.6 billion. However, for technical reasons, this revision was recorded in D9 (capital transfers). As a result, the government deficit has been slightly revised upwards (by 0.1%). In addition, the distributed income of corporations (D42) received by non-financial corporations (S11) has been revised upwards by 3 billion while that received by banks (S12A) have been revised symmetrically downwards by 3 billion.

In the context of the notification of general government debt and deficit to the European Commission, the annual accounts are updated each year at the end of August to incorporate the final social security accounting data not available for the April 1 notification, as well as revisions that may affect general government account. This update is carried out with the publication of the detailed results of the quarterly accounts for the second quarter.
The surplus of social security administrations is revised upwards by 0.3 billion euros in 2019 and stands at 14.4 billion euros. The State deficit is increased by 0.6 billion euros from 2016 to 2019. The State's participation in concessional lending window of multilateral development banks are reclassified as Maastrichtian expenditure, whereas they were previously recorded under financial operations.
Overall, the public deficit is deteriorated by 0.6 billion euros in 2016, 2017 and 2018, and by 0.3 billion euros in 2019. In 2019, it thus stood at 73 billion euros, or 3.0% of GDP.
Relative to GDP, Maastricht debt is unchanged (98.1% in 2019), while the net debt now stands at 89.2% of GDP (compared with 89.5% at the time of the May 2020 publication) .
Tables 7.101, 7.301-7.306 are accordingly modified.

Public finances data notified on 2021-03-31 to the European Commission, within the frame of the excessive deficit procedure, are avalaible in the “Public finances” rubric.

Other annual data of “The national accounts in 2019”  remain those of the last national accounts campaign published on 2020-05-29.