The main goals of the EUROSTUDENT VII Project are: a) to deliver valid, high quality data on the socio-economic background and living conditions of European higher education students, in order to contribute to understanding and furthering the social dimension in the European Higher Education Area at institutional, national, and European level; b) to provide a broad policy-relevant cross-country comparison of data on the social dimension, delivering high-quality comparable data in line with international standards for comparative data analyses, and data of high political relevance in close cooperation with decision-makers and stakeholders.in Italy as well as other participating countries, both researchers and policy-makers are involved. This constellation of research and policy-makers assures that the development stage of the Project adequately takes account of the methodical and analytical challenges involved in fulfilling the goal of evidence-based policy. Close cooperation among participating countries ensures the comparability and interpretability of the data for the different national contexts. The EUROSTUDENT VII Project will build on previous experience within Eurostudent Network, to create and utilise reporting structures that are informative, sound and are able to facilitate policy evaluation and discussions on further developments.