In recent ten years, education has become one of the core drivers for assuring long term economic sustainability of European societies – through production of skilled workforce and responsible citizens and through production of knowledge and innovation. While traditionally constrained in the treaty, the development of OMC has created institutionalized for action.
However, this means a new set of actors and interests and a process beyond usual within-sector uploading, as the overall EU activities in the area of education cross over school education, higher education, adult education, and vocational training, in addition to overlaps with research and employment policies. In addition, stakeholder groups have frequent overlaps with those who function as policymakers or experts. The development of lifelong learning agenda to coordinate activities in education/training illustrates how the forces of coordination and fragmentation play out in terms of the functional differentiation of various policy arenas.
So whose interests get priority in this space between subsidiarity and supranational interests? Which actors and through what means have the ability to put issues on the agenda and guide future action on European level? How are issues of horizontal sectoral coordination dealt? How is participation assured? When and how is the development of new policy instruments agreed upon?
Conceptually, the paper takes a broad starting point in three entities: institutions, ideas and actors. Actors are the participants who through meaningful action are involved in the policy process, ideas are the knowledge base that inform decisions, and institutions that constrain available options (Howlett et al 2009). This paper is based on the key findings from a PhD project and will focus on these questions taking the development of European Qualifications Framework as a case.
