The EHEA is an international project for the harmonisation of higher education (HE) systems through the Bologna Process action lines. The EHEA was started in 1998 by four countries and has ‘grown’ ever since, currently including 49 countries within and beyond the EU (EHEA, 2022). 2020 is a ‘tipping point’ for EHEA’s signatories because it was the deadline for achieving a fully-functioning EHEA and organising the work for its new 2030 deadline. The EHEA has, arguably, emerged as a platform for Europeanisation, particularly after the adoption in 2001 of the goal for the EU to become “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world”, which followed Lisbon Council in 2000 when this goal was originally set specifically for the EU (Corbett, 2011: 36).

This conference presentation is a two-case-study extract (the UK and Germany) from a larger four-case-study project, funded by Spencer Foundation and Research England. The overarching project focuses on the four founders of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA): the UK, Germany, France and Italy. The project adopts the rational-choice neo-institutionalist approach to differentiated Europeanisation and applies it to the analysis of EHEA membership and its associated Europeanisation. Rational choice neo-institutionalism highlights ‘the increasing political opportunities provided by European integration’ and resulting ‘strategic organizational adaptation displayed by interest groups…when domestic political actors ‘rationally’ use European resources in order to support predefined preferences’ (Graziano and Vink, 2017: 40). The Bologna Process serves as such a resource, and EHEA memberships of the four founding countries are framed as a rational choice of stakeholders for their participation in a form of Europeanisation. Radaelli (2004: 3) maintains that Europeanisation (or European integration) “consists of processes of a) construction, b) diffusion and c) institutionalisation of formal and informal rules, procedures, policy paradigms, styles, 'ways of doing things' and shared beliefs and norms which are first defined and consolidated in the EU policy process and then incorporated in the logic of domestic (national and subnational) discourse, political structures and public policies”. Growing differentiated Europeanisation is the most commonly discussed form of Europeanisation since a few decades ago (Stubb, 1996).

The concept ‘differentiated Europeanisation’ has already been applied to the analysis of the EHEA which spreads far beyond the EU. Veiga et al (2015) applied it, but only in the area of HE harmonisation and only in the context of Germany, Italy, Norway and Portugal. Even though Germany and Italy featured in that study, it did not answer the questions posed by my project. This is because the scholars relied only on the analysis of country’s Bologna reports prior to 2009, did not review the situation post-2020, did not offer an in-depth exploration of the perspectives of key HE actors on the EHEA membership and did not view it as a case of a wider Europeanisation agenda of the countries. There is a range of single-country studies or collective case studies that incorporated only some countries of my interest in the context of the EHEA. Most earlier studies focus on the implementation implications of Bologna and the process of relevant reforms (e.g, Field, 2005; Guth, 2006; Malan, 2004; Antoniolli, 2006). The foci of recent studies are more varied, such as in Marquand and Scott (2018) about the difference of enthusiasm for the Bologna action lines in UK devolved governments, or in Turner (2019: 515) – about Bologna being a trigger for altering the ‘function and status that the former classical German university enjoyed’. However, Europeanisation resulting from EHEA membership is not the prime focus of these studies.

While literature about the participation of the UK, Germany, France and Italy in the EHEA is diverse, no research explores them jointly as the EHEA founders. The originality of this project lies in addressing this gap by investigating: 1. What are the perspectives of key HE actors in the founding countries of the European Higher Education Area (UK and Germany (to be presented in the conference), France and Italy) on the significance of their membership in this Area for them post-2020? 2. How does this inform our understanding of the wider Europeanisation agenda of the four countries? BERA (2018) ethical guidelines were followed in the design of this qualitative collective case-study project. While a degree of comparison is assumed here, it is not a comparative study per se, but rather a study aimed at gaining a full account of the issue in multiple cases (Stake, 1994). Ethical approval for this project has been obtained from institution X. In brief, the interviewees are provided with a research information sheet and sign an electronic consent from (that includes the statements about confidentiality, anonymity, right of withdrawal, data storage, etc). The UK case study has been completed and the other three case studies are in progress. Data collection and analysis for the German case study will finish before the conference. Data collection relies on interviews with key stakeholders in the four countries as the main data source, supplemented by the collection of relevant official communications from their websites. Online (Ms Teams) semi-structured in-depth interviews rely on a non-probability opportunistic/snowball sample of at least six participants from each country, targeting representatives from key HE actors listed on the EHEA website for the four countries (EHEA, 2022). Initial contacts are made via the contact e-mails/forms provided on their websites. These stakeholders’ official communications about Bologna post-2020 are collected by searching their websites using the keywords 'Bologna', 'European Higher Education Area' and 'EHEA'. The interviews are transcribed, aiming for the edited transcript type. They are analysed thematically in NVivo, along with the official communications which are relevant to the research questions. The analysis follows Rubin and Rubin’s (2012) guide for open and axial coding of themes. The open coding is guided by the conceptual framework outlined earlier and illustrated by a list of relevant quotations from the transcripts. The themes are regrouped in the axial coding, highlighting the nature of the relationship among them.

The overarching project about the four founding countries of the EHEA aims to make an essential contribution to the scholarship about the EHEA by advancing our limited knowledge about its initiators and their Europeanisation in the post-2020 era. The trends specifically from the UK and Germany are going to be presented in the conference. Revealing these trends is also significant and timely for theorising differentiated Europeanisation from HE perspective and informing EHEA international level policy-making in the run-up to its new deadline of 2030. The first years after the 19.11.2020 stocktaking ministerial meeting are crucial in shaping the directions of work of EHEA’s signatories. The UK case study has yielded insightful results, particularly in relation to its dual membership in the EHEA - Scotland on one hand, and England, Wales and Northern Ireland (the EWNI) on the other hand. Rational-choice neo-institutionalism has enabled us to see the nuances of the difference in opportunities provided by UK dual EHEA membership that domestic interest groups choose to pursue post-2020. Scotland has embraced specifically Europeanisation opportunities in HE through its EHEA membership, while the EWNI have alluded mainly to wider internationalisation ideas that EHEA membership offers, particularly its passive power-excretion mechanisms, albeit still holding on to EHEA neoliberal offerings which are associated with Ward et al’s (2019: 123) idea of ‘neoliberal Europeanisation’. The demonstrate that Europeanisation has not vanished with Brexit in the UK and it is ongoing in some forms. The findings from the German case study are expected to be less divided, despite the political divisions within the country, continuing some of the Europeanisation-through-education from the previous decade, which is discussed in Walkenhorst (2006). However, a more active driving role of Germany in setting ‘the tone’ for the current EHEA is also expected as compared to both UK members.

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