The European Union education policy sets objectives and goals for the education systems of member states, and aims at achieving consensus over the definitions of education priorities and directions for the future, following 10-year cycles. Given that education is a policy area covered by the principle of subsidiarity, it is part of the governance architecture governed by an open method of coordination, long-term goals and strategic processes (Borrás and Radaelli, 2011). Following the 2000 European Council Conclusions, education policy has been incorporated firmly into wider EU processes such as the Semester (Eeva, 2021), and driven by benchmarks & indicators, periodic monitoring, and policy learning structures (Souto‐Otero, et al., 2008). As such, it contributes to the institutional and ideational structures that reflect values and norms regarding education goals and the place of education in the EU integration project (Lange & Alexiadou, 2010; Norman, 2021; Rambla, 2018).

At the end of Education and Training 2020, the European Commission published a Communication on the new strategic framework “European Education Area 2025”, followed by an important Council Resolution (Council of the EU, 2021). Framed by contexts of multiple crises, education is expected to contribute to the solution of several education, social and economic problems. Against this policy context, our research aims to understand policy change and addresses the following questions: (a) What are the new policy priorities for education and what are the key policy ideas that frame their achievement? (b) What are the discursive continuities and shifts with the earlier ET2020 program and their consequences for the content and governance of education policy?

Theoretically we draw on discursive institutionalism, and pay attention to the use of policy ideas as discourses that, through their articulation and communication, constitute institutional structures (Schmidt, 2010). We view policy ideas as the product of interactions between institutions and individual actors, embedded in structures that provide specific policy contexts, and so frame the possibilities and alternatives in the formulation and communication of policy. We identify the key policy ideas that define the future for education in the EU, what their discursive properties suggest for the existing institutional settings they emerge from, as well as for the key policy institutions and actors within (Commission, Council, Member States) who participate in the construction of policy priorities.

Our empirical work consists of two types of data. First, in-depth individual interviews with 9 officials in the Directorate-General for Education, Culture, Languages, Youth and Sport (DG-EAC), the Cabinet of the Commission President, and the Council of the European Union working on, or contributing, to the development of the European Education Area 2025. Second, we review selected documentary material produced by the Commission and Council, that represent the vision and plans for the construction of the EEA: (a) the Communication from the Commission on achieving the European Education Area by 2025 (European Commission, 2020); (b) the accompanying Commission Staff Working Document on the achievement of the European Education Area by 2025 (European Commission, 2020b); and (c) the Council Resolution (and its Annex) on a strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training towards the European Education Area and beyond 2021-2030 (Council, 2021). We followed a combination of an inductive thematic analysis and a discursive interpretation of policy texts and interviews that aim to understand how individual elite and organizational policy actors engage with the policy ideas they describe, the legitimation arguments that are put forward, and the “importance of ideational structures for constraining which ideas are considered politically viable” (Carstensen & Schmidt, 2016:320).

Our research gives insight into the dynamics of defining education policy goals in the EEA framework. In particular, we highlight (a) the complex interplay between institutional structures and policy ideas; and, (b) the tensions within and across institutions. New and controversial policy ideas (featuring in the Communication) failed to establish themselves into the new framework endorsed by the Council, and so did not challenge the existing and established institutional structure. Specifically, the replacement of lifelong learning by inclusion, and the introduction of gender as a headline priority were not successful, either because they went against the governance architecture that operationalized policy ideas into a working program (re, lifelong learning), or because they did not garner the consensus-based agreement required in different policy fields (gender). Second, our study suggests that the long standing cross-sectoral tensions between education and employment (Antunes, 2016) continue in the negotiation of the new framework, as do the ideas they draw on to support different policy preferences.

Antunes, F. 2016. Economising education: From the silent revolution to rethinking education. A new moment of Europeanisation of education? European Educational Research Journal, 15:4, 410-427. Borrás, S., Radaelli, C.M. 2011. The politics of governance architectures: creation, change and effects of the EU Lisbon Strategy, Journal of European Public Policy, 18:4, 463-48. Carstensen, M. B. & Schmidt, V.A. 2016. Power through, over and in ideas: conceptualizing ideational power in discursive institutionalism, Journal of European Public Policy, 23:3, 318-337. Council of the European Union. 2021. Council Resolution on a strategic framework for European cooperation in education and training towards the European Education Area and beyond (2021-2030). Official Journal of the European Union, 2021/C 66/01. Eeva, K. 2021. Governing through consensus? The European Semester, soft power and education governance in the EU. European Educational Research Journal. https://doi.org/10.1177/14749041211055601 European Commission, 2020. Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of Regions, on achieving the European Education Area by 2025, COM(2020) 625 final. Brussels, 30.9.2020, SWD(2020) 212 final. European Commission, 2020b. Commission Staff Working Document Accompanying the document Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of Regions, on achieving the European Education Area by 2025, COM(2020) 212 final. Brussels, 30.9.2020, SWD(2020) 212 final. Lange, B., Alexiadou, N. 2010. Policy learning and governance of education policy in the EU. Journal of Education Policy, 25:4, 443–63. Norman, R. 2021. The new European political arithmetic of inequalities in education: A history of the present. Social Inclusion, 9:3, 361–371. Rambla, X. (2018) The politics of early school leaving: how do the European Union and the Spanish educational authorities ‘frame’the policy and formulate a ‘theory of change’. Journal of European Integration 40 (1), 83-97. Schmidt, V. 2010. Taking ideas and discourse seriously: explaining change through discursive institutionalism as the fourth ‘new institutionalism’. European Political Science Review 2:1, 1–25. Souto‐Otero, M. Fleckenstein, T., Dacombe, R. 2008. Filling in the gaps: European governance, the open method of coordination and the European Commission, Journal of Education Policy, 23:3, 231-249.