Cultural statistics, as presented in the pocketbook published by Eurostat in October 2007, rely on the pragmatic definition of culture generally agreed upon during the earlier work by the European Leadership Group (LEG). It was decided to restrict the field to activities that were recognised as cultural by every Member State. For this r eason sports and tourism, for example, were excluded. Next, the field of culture was broken down into some sixty activities, cross-relating eight “domains” (artistic and monumental heritage, archives, libraries, books and press, visual arts, architecture, performing arts and audiovisual/multimedia) to six “functions” (conservation, creation, production, dissemination, trade and training).

The field of culture defined in this way does not equate to any particular economic sector and therefore is not covered by sectoral surveys. It includes activities in numerous areas of social and economic life which are not always identifiable in economic classifications. As a result, there are no statistics for a number of activities which cannot be singled out from national and European surveys or data collections for examination.

“Cultural statistics”, a Eurostat pocketbook which was the first of its kind, presents data related to culture which are currently available from European harmonised surveys and data collections, as well as additional information from other data sources (mainly UNESCO and Eurobarometer).