The key research interest of this paper is to trace the development of the European Sectoral Social Dialogue in Education (ESSDE) since 2010 and situate it within the context of Europe 2020. A little-studied aspect of education and employment governance, the ESSDE is one of more than 40 European sectoral social dialogue committees. The ESSDE was launched in 2010 and involves the social partners of the European Trade Union Committee for Education (ETUCE) and the European Federation of Education Employers (EFEE), with the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment in the role as coordinator. As a forum for bi-partite social dialogue, involving negotiation and consultation between employers and workers on issues of common interest (International Labour Office, 2005), the ESSDE provides a pertinent entry point for analysing education and employment governance as part of European Union (EU) multi-level governance (Hooghe and Marks, 2001), and more specifically the governance architecture of Europe 2020 (Borrás and Radaelli, 2011). Drawing on 20 texts issued by ESSDE since 2010 and ten semi-structured interviews with representatives involved in ESSDE and cross-sectoral social dialogue at national and European levels, we argue that the trajectory of ESSDE has been decisively shaped by vertical, horizontal and internal tensions (Elken, 2015). First, vertical coordination in the ESSDE is marked by a ‘double divergence’ (Léonard et al., 2011) between: i) the varying socio-economic situations in EU member states where EFEE and ETUCE member organisations have different profiles and resources; and ii) between EFEE and ETUCE member organisations and the European Commission’s demarcation of ESSDE. Second, the horizontal tensions play out in the deepening coordination between sectoral and cross-sectoral social partners in their efforts to seek influence. Finally, the internal tensions are related to the nature of the ESSDE as part of EU multi-level governance: i) the goals of ESSDE to promote consensus-building and democratic involvement are at odds with the governing tools of the EU’s new economic governance which implies mutual competition between labour forces across member states (Erne, 2015); and ii) subject to the principle of subsidiarity, the EU’s competences with regard to education sectors remain contested. Whilst these tensions continue to make it complicated for ETUCE and EFEE to define common interests among their constituencies, the outputs from ESSDE have been progressing towards higher levels of obligations for social partners. Accordingly, we discuss the strategies of ETUCE and EFEE in managing the ambiguity and tensions of the ESSDE.

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