Regional organisations play a crucial role in the global governance of education. As associations of states representing regional interests, they carry significant influence in international policy negotiations and in advancing these policies regionally. Simultaneously, one of their key responsibilities in the era of globalization is mitigating its effects on their regions by adapting the global agenda to regional contexts and addressing the gaps (Cooper et al., 2007). Consequently, regional organisations contribute substantially to either the legitimization or de-legitimization of international initiatives. They foster alignment with global discourses and processes or exacerbate discrepancies by highlighting their regional irrelevance (Dale & Robertson, 2002). European organisations have been instrumental in developing and promoting the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). While the European Union (EU) is often regarded as the primary European actor in development due to its international donor role, the Council of Europe (CoE) exerts considerable influence in the educational domain. Established before the EU, the CoE had already positioned itself as a significant player in education well before the EU entered the field (Patel & Calligaro, 2017). The CoE’s reach extends beyond Western Europe, encompassing countries of Eastern, Southern Europe and Central Asia that receive socio-economic development funding and that have been intensely involved in the SDG (Sachs-Israel, 2016; UNSDG, n.d.) The worldwide SDG 4 implementation is coordinated by the Education-2030 High-Level Steering Committee. Within this framework, the EU represents only Western European countries, while the CoE serves as a key regional representative for Eastern Europe (UNESCO, n.d.). The CoE’s approach to legitimizing or de-legitimizing SDG 4 therefore illustrates how regional organisations shape the promotion or resistance to global agendas regionally. This study applies critical policy analysis (Bacchi, 2012; Young & Diem, 2018) to examine key CoE policy documents, including records of major education-related events, institutional programs, and budgets. The preliminary findings identify three primary mechanisms of legitimization: 1. Alignment of the CoE’s strategic frameworks in education with the SDG timeline. 2. Frequent references to the coherence between regional actions and the SDGs. 3. A hierarchical narrative emphasizing the prioritization of SDGs over the regional agenda. Conversely, de-legitimization is evident in the CoE’s reliance on long-standing institutional concepts embedded in regional agreements. Instead of promoting the SDG’s Global Citizenship Education concept, the CoE continues to focus on the European dimension of citizenship, democracy, and human rights education, which are subsumed under the broader concept of global citizenship in the SDG agenda.

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