In the last decade European Union’s action has reveal countors of what we can identify of regulatory regionalism (Jayasuryia, 2008), creating new ways of regional governance as peer review, policy networks and multilevel governance, which reconfigures the building processes of national policies of education. The formal constitution of Lisbon Strategy through the Education and Training Program 2010 and the Open Method of Coordination has brought new challenges to Member-States in the adoption of an agenda which aims to make Europe the most competitive economy in the world.

Our study seeks to understand the discursive agenda, strategic rationalities and the mechanisms of external effects present in the creation and implementation of a massive program for young and adults with low education levels, launched in 2005, named by New Opportunities Program (NOP). Being Portugal a Member-State of European Union and signatory of the political project, Lisbon Strategy, we consider that NOP results and is wrapped in complexes processes of globalization and regionalization, and contributes to the configuration of a a new mandate for adults education in Portugal.

For this purpose, we seek to: identify and analyze the discursive agenda bound to Lisbon Strategy and on Education and Training Program 2010 and to NOP, in order to verify the existence of ideologies transfer; analyze the strategic rationalities in view the European Union and Open Method of Coordination action and their consequences on structural arrangements and modus operandi of Portuguese State in NOP creation and implementation; and finally, identify the mechanisms of external effects present in NOP, having as reference the typology developed by Dale (1999).

To understand those processes, we affiliate our study in the Dale’s approach, globally strucutured agenda for education (1999, 2001, 2002), which allows us to understand how the phenomenon of globalization and regionalization influencing the ways of thinking and doing education policies. For the author, education field is crossed by a pluri-scalar work (Dale, 2005), where international organizations, regional blocks like European Union and the National States themselves build new geographies of power.  

Although the globalization and europeanization processes might influence the education policies, these do not lead to high levels of homogeneity. Having national States an autonomy degree in how they interpret and implement the global agenda, we witness a diffuse combination between convergence and divergence processes among States, shaped by the national specificities. Assuming the influence, but refusing the completely loss of national autonomy, the typology of mechanisms of external effects on national policies (Dale, 1999) allow us to understand the nature and extension of these influence. The mechanisms are seven – borrowing, learning, harmonization, dissemination, standardization, installing interdependence and imposition – and its effects could be analyze by nine dimensions – nature of relationship, explicitness of process, scope, locus of viability, process, parties involved, source of initiation, dimension of power and nature of effect of education.  

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