Culture statistics at EU-level. Towards more information, visibility and harmonization

What do we know about culture in Europe in terms of statistics? How many people are working in cultural sectors? But – in fact – what is it a ‘cultural sector’? How often Europeans go to the life performances and which are the main reasons not to do so? How many museums are in the EU countries? But – what is a ‘museum’? Culture is a very complex domain and dimension of life. And a very important one – in individual countries and in Europe as a community. But how to describe it by data? We can approach it by pictures on its different aspects – obviously those which can be measured. The list of the domains and dimensions of culture was elaborated at the EU level within the ‘European framework for cultural statistics’. The next step was (and continues to be) to put behind these domains data which are comparable between countries. EUROSTAT – the statistical office of the European Union – has been working on it since ten years. The article presents how EUROSTAT is working on culture statistics in collaboration with the EU Member States, which harmonized data on different aspects of culture can be found on EUROSTAT website, and which are the challenges and plans for further developments