Evidence-based policy making for cultural heritage

What are the implications of that awareness about the role of evidence when it comes to policy making in the field of cultural heritage? On several occasions, the European Council has underlined the need to develop cultural statistics and the European Parliament has regretted the absence of data in this field. Still today, Culture statistics for the EU are not collected by a single stand-alone survey, but come from different Eurostat data collections. Starting from statistical conceptual frames established by ESS-net-Culture Commission, the paper discusses the characteristics of sources and data on cultural heritage available today for supporting policymaking at the EU level.