Many authors have underlined that processes of Europeanisation of education emerge despite the European Union’s lack of formal power in this matter. We would like to argue, in contrast, that this alleged lack of power is precisely what enables the EU to open up a range of possibilities for its implication in the domain of education. The paper focuses on the Open Method of Coordination in education as an instance where a “European space of education” (Dale, 2009; Lawn, 2011) emerges. Now baptised Education and Training 2020, the OMC in education is inherently ambiguous: it is meant to belong to the political field, yet lacks many of the characteristics one would expect to detect in political arenas. Several authors have linked this type of ambiguity to the “Governance Turn” (Armstrong, 2016; Kjaer, 2010), the “Comparative Turn” (Grek, 2009, 2010) or the “Knowledge Turn” (Fenwick, Mangez, & Ozga, 2014; Freeman & Mangez, 2013; Normand & Derouet, 2016). The technologies of governance most frequently analysed in this literature are indicators and benchmarks, which give form to the European education space through the creation and accumulation of statistical data, leading to the comparison and the ranking of Nation States’ performances. Using interviews with key actors, direct observations and document analysis, our paper calls for a broadening of the analysis of the political forms that emerged within the European governance of education. Our objective is to complement the analysis of the quantitative side of the European governance with an analysis of the qualitative political learning processes at work within the ET2020 working groups. We show how the informal character of the ET2020 working groups operates not as an obstacle but rather as a resource for their development (Kjaer, 2010). The distance that separates them from more formal circuits of decision-making actually facilitates discussions and, potentially, strengthens the ability of their members to engage in processes of “learning by meeting” (Freeman, 2008). Against this background, this paper argues that, next to the more formal political sphere and next to the quantitative governance mechanisms that benchmarks and indicators are, these informal groups and their cognitive processes play a diffuse and complementary role in the development of the European space of education.

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