What changed for intermediation activities?

New classes for intermediation activities appear in most sections of NACE Rev. 2.1. According to Statistics Netherlands, many new codes were added for intermediaries and mediation, covering companies that link customers to a service, product or seller, such as online marketplaces and comparison sites. The Spanish statistical institute reports the same change: numerous new classes for intermediation, previously placed with the product or service classes being intermediated or in the residual business support class.

The revision pulls the linking activity apart from the activity being linked. Supplying the underlying product or service is not what an intermediary does; bringing the parties together is, and that linking work now has its own grouping in the classification.

What is an intermediation activity in the classification?

Intermediation, in classification terms, means bringing buyers and sellers, or users and providers, together for a product or service supplied by someone else. A platform, marketplace, comparison site or agency arrangement may be the form it takes, but the classification looks to the linking role rather than the technology. Eurostat and the Irish CSO both count revised intermediation rules and a revised treatment of intermediation among the conceptual changes in NACE Rev. 2.1. The boundary for a section is set out in the notes for its new classes, showing which activities count as intermediation for that kind of product or service and which remain with the class for the underlying activity, so the note for the section concerned must be read: no single general rule covers every case, because the boundary is drawn section by section.

Old grouping	New grouping	Boundary test
Class for the product or service intermediated	Intermediation class in the same section	Does the unit supply the product or service, or only link the parties?
Residual business support class	Intermediation class in the same section	Is the linking the main activity described?
No separate heading	New intermediation class	Does the note cover the linking activity?

The movement is described in general terms in the table above, following Statistics Netherlands and the Spanish statistical institute. No class is named in the table, since the classes appear across most sections and each section structure and notes must be consulted in turn.

How do the new classes affect old headings?

Intermediation activities leave the old headings where they were previously grouped, including the residual business support heading, which held them for want of a better place. Titles of old headings may be unchanged, yet their scope narrows as those activities leave. A product or service class series that once included intermediation can fall when intermediation moves out, even while the underlying activity holds steady, and the residual support class series shows a similar effect. The old headings feeding each new intermediation class are shown by the correspondence tables, and the changed scope of the old headings is shown by the notes. Comparing old and new figures for a product class without allowing for the movement will misread the trend.

How is an intermediation heading checked?

Checking a heading means reading together the note for the candidate intermediation class and the note for the candidate underlying activity class. The boundary is where the pair of notes is read together. Supplying the product or service points to the underlying class; only linking the parties points to the intermediation class. Where a unit does both, the single statistical description follows the principal activity method in the introductory guidelines, which this guide does not apply to any specific business. Platforms that also sell on their own account are a common mixed case, and general resolution comes from the notes and the guidelines together, not from a title or a search result. A specific business entry is confirmed with the national statistical institute or the business register holding the record.

What the change does not decide

Regulation of a platform, marketplace or agency in any particular way is outside what the change decides, as are tax, licensing, funding and employment questions, which rest with the authorities applying their own rules. The classification groups the linking activity for statistical purposes only: an intermediation code describes that statistical grouping, grants no status and imposes no obligation, and says nothing about the legal character of the arrangement. That distinction matters because intermediation is an area where a statistical heading is often read as settling a legal question. It does not settle one.

The result is a separate grouping for linking parties across most sections, narrower old product and residual headings, and a boundary stated by the paired notes of each section.