Adult learning policies, like any other policies, need to be effective: they need to reach their objectives and attain the desired impacts, which should be carefully defined. Understanding the performance of policies allows policy makers to change and improve them. A growing body of research and statistics provides important insights into how better to achieve policy goals. The study aimed to identify those factors that help to achieve effective adult learning policy. The study concludes that adult learning policy could be made significantly more effective through a more systematic collection of data, and a more rigorous approach to evaluation to enable Member States' policy actions to be monitored against their objectives.