The ENCR and the JRC (Joint Research Centre of the European Commission) collaborate on setting up a comparable database of European cancer registries data, to provide regular information on the burden of cancer in the European Union and neighbouring countries. This database is at the core of the European Cancer Information System (ECIS), the web application disseminating cancer burden statistics and trends across Europe, based on data from European population-based cancer registries.
Starting from 2022, the JRC has established a Collaboration Agreement with the ENCR registries, aimed at structuring and formalizing collaboration on scientific activities, training, and the data provision for ECIS. The purpose and conditions of all data processing operations at the JRC are accessible in a data protection record.
Contributing to ECIS
Cancer registries can contribute to updating the ECIS database on a rolling basis, i.e. not restricted to dedicated data calls. Submissions received by 31 January each year will be considered for inclusion in the yearly update of ECIS indicators.
The entire time series is submitted through the secure JRC-ENCR portal. The portal, hosted by the JRC on a secure server, will handle the submission of individual-level data folowing the European Commission rules on data protection. To facilitate the data submission process, a user manual for the data submission portal is available.
The data call protocol outlines the requirements and guidelines for data submission. Additionally, a data call questionnaire is available to allow cancer registries to inform about the specificities of their data for each submission.
Data Validation
The JRC validates the submitted data according to the most updated international and European coding rules, specifically the Common data quality checks for European cancer registries. Participating cancer registries receive feedback on the quality of the submitted data.
The release of the updated version of the JRC-ENCR Quality Checks software (QCS 2.1) in November 2023 was an essential step that will allow the validation to progress faster, ensuring comparability of the cancer registries data across Europe.
Coverage of the ECIS database
ECIS was recently updated thanks to the key contribution from 128 European national and regional population-based cancer registries across 32 countries.
Map interim coverage of ECIS data from cancer registries 22.05.2025.
Data are published in the ECIS Data Explorer, which provides a comprehensive overview of cancer incidence and mortality in Europe.
Please contact the ENCR Secretariat at the Joint Research Centre should you need any support.