In the 1980s when Bourdieu set out to examine the structural homology between the grandes écoles and the French ‘field of power’, he stressed that ’one cannot study the ruling class, the elite, the dominant, without elucidating the conditions under which they reproduce themselves’. Since then – through increased European integration – the national fields of power have been challenged by the emergence of a transnational EU elite and ’the field of Eurocracy’. Drawing on Bourdieu’s idea of a structural homology, this explorative paper discusses a project on the relation between a number of educational institutions and the formation this new transnational elite. Methods/methodology Drawing on primary sources from the Historical Archives of the European Union, case studies of two institutions which were founded with the mandate of providing Brussels with a new and loyal bureaucratic corps will be presented. Expected outcomes/results Discussing the College of Europe in Brugge, Belgium (’the elite training centre for the European Union’s political class’), and the European University Institute in Florence, Italy (’EU’s own Brookings Institution’), this paper will illustrate the ideological genesis and future trajectory of these two institutions and what role they have played in the formation of a transnational EU elite.