It’s comical, in a very depressing way, that the US leads the way in providing free, unencumbered GIS data (and all the other federally funded databases they publish in the public domain), while European governments insists on holding on to restrictions that don’t belong anywhere on taxpayer funded data.

I suspect the only way this data will be “liberated” in Europe is through projects like Geonames duplicating the government efforts.

Personally I find it questionable that EUROSTAT, as part of the EU Commission, paints that strange image of Europe.

UTS levels 2 and 3
In Scotland, the border between North Eastern Scotland and Highlands and Islands will be shifted by moving east Moray to the latter region. This will affect the borders at both NUTS level 2 and level 3.

A number of region names are being changed or corrected at all NUTS levels, in various parts of the United Kingdom.

All changes in the European regional classification will enter into force on 1 January 2008. For technical reasons, we will switch to the new version of NUTS (NUTS 2007/EU-27) in our dissemination database in late autumn 2007.
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Now try reading that real fast. It is confusing.

Alas, the INSPIRE Directive stipulates that this sort of data will become freely available – at least that is the intent. Then, folks may proceed to make a living while going nuts.