European Journal of Education, Vol. 38, No. 3, 2003

Ideas, Institutions and Policy Entrepreneurs: towards a new history of higher education in the European Community

ANNE CORBETT

Introduction The history of European Community policy-making in education is widely understood to have started in the 1970s (Neave, 1984; de Witte, 1989; Beukel, 1994; McMahon 1995; Field, 1998; Moschonas, 1998). Although a ‘law’ of education had built up by the late 1960s, early 1970s, derived from EC commitments to mobility of labour and freedom of establishment (de Witte, 1989), the Treaty of Rome (European Economic Community) did not provide competence for Community action in education. Hence the issue was seen as ‘taboo’ (Neave, 1984) in the early years of the EC. In 1971, EC ministers of education, meeting for the first time, agreed to political cooperation, taking a lead from EC leaders at the 1969 Hague Summit who committed their governments to work to ‘widen’ and ‘deepen’ the Community beyond the original economic objectives of the EEC. These commentators have explained the EC policy-making process as one of gradual evolution constructed on links to closely related issues which did have Treaty competence and emanated from the Community’s duty to ensure the free movement of labour — such as vocational training and the education of children of migrant workers (Neave, 1984; de Witte, 1989).The later works stress the development of EC education as an EC policy area linked to the Community’s general economic strategies in an era of globalisation, and notably the Single European Act, 1986 (Field, 1998; Moschonas 1998). The argument of this article, which focuses on EC activity in higher education, is that an approach to the history of EC policy development in higher education in terms of the policy process — agenda setting, decision-making and implementation — can reveal a very different story. It sets out to demonstrate that policy development is more plausibly explained as a non-incremental process, notably the dynamics of European integration at a particular moment in time, and the skilful — if improvised — leadership by EU politicians and entrepreneurial bureaucrats, each committed to driving forward a specific policy idea. This article wishes to show that the period before 1971 was an active period of policy-making and thus an essential input into understanding the policy-making process that developed after 1971 and which led to the Erasmus and other programmes in the period 1987–92, and, since 1998, to the Bologna Process of convergence within a European Higher Education Area, and the process launched by © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

316 European Journal of Education the European Council at Lisbon in 2000 to stimulate the ‘Europe of Knowledge’ which is deemed by the EU’s political leaders to be one of the characteristics which the EU needs to assert ever more powerfully on the world stage. The theoretical insights for this challenge to existing interpretations are drawn from the literature of historical institutionalism — i.e. a tradition which gives great importance to ideas and to institutional rules (Thelen & Steinmo, 1992; Pierson, 1996). Methodologically, this study conceptualises the policy process largely in terms of the agenda-setting model made famous by John Kingdon (1984). Kingdon, imagining the choices that come to face decision-makers, sees a dual process which consists of agenda-setting and challenges to the agenda in the form of a specified alternative. It is out of this confrontation that policy-makers’ choice is made and presented to decision-makers. Kingdon designates the individuals who succeed in advancing issues on the agenda as ‘policy entrepreneurs’ and characterises them as unusually tenacious and ambitious, as well as skilled and authoritative. The historical account conceptualised in these policy process terms is presented as a narrative. Choosing the Kingdon model has the advantage that it provides a way of constructing a coherent narrative based on the ‘plot’ of how an idea progresses from something in ‘l’air du temps’, or in Kingdon’s words, the ‘policy soup’, to the point at which decision makers accept the idea in some form. The primary sources for this study are drawn from unexploited historical sources of the European Commission and Council, the European Community Historical Archives, the private papers of some of the policy actors and 50 or so interviews (Corbett, 2002). This article presents an historical narrative of policy-making in EC higher education centred on five policy ‘choices’, or decisions, in the period 1957–1987. It discusses how events and resources interacted with existing ideas and institutional constraints to produce the five outcomes, before returning to the question of the historical interpretation of EC policy in higher education. The five decisions are: (i) (ii) (iii) (iv) (v)

The Treaty of Rome (European Atomic Energy Community) 1957, Articles 9 (2) and 216 to create an institution of university status The communiqué of Heads of State and Government meeting in Bonn, 18 July 1961: extract on education, and the European University The Resolution of Ministers of Education meeting with the Council of 16 Nov 1971 on cooperation in the field of education The Resolution of the Council and the Ministers of Education of 9 Feb 1976 to create an action programme in the field of education The Decision of the Council of 15 June 1987 adopting the European Community action scheme for the mobility of university students (Erasmus) (87/327/EEC).

EC Higher Education Policy: development and change 1955–87 Proposing and Deciding a European University, 1955–57 The history of higher education as a policy issue for the EC dates from 1 June 1955, when the foreign ministers of Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands and the civil service head of the German Federal Republic’s foreign

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ministry met at Messina in Sicily. They had in common that their six governments were members of the European Coal and Steel Community. Their task was to find a basis for extending European integration. The ministers had arrived at Messina in an anxious mood. The two previous attempts to extend European integration beyond the European Coal and Steel Community — a policy sector agreed to be crucial in the aftermath of war — had failed. The six governments concerned had split over the European Political Community initiative put forward in 1953. In 1954, they had agreed the principle of a European Defence Community, but the French Parliament had refused to ratify it. In the hope of a more successful outcome, the ministers had prepared the Messina meeting by working on the new idea of creating two communities: a European Atomic Energy Community (the new energy to succeed coal and steel) and the then apparently less important European Economic Community. The proposal for a European University to be created by the Community was made — to general astonishment — at the Messina meeting. Walter Hallstein, the representative of the German Federal Republic, produced a late paper in favour of the Community creating a university with a specific European mission. The West German government believed strongly that any European Community needed a cultural dimension: the Federal Government hopes to show that tangible testimony to young people of the desire for European union through the foundation of a European University to be created by the six ECSC states. The immediate reaction of the initiators of the meeting, the Belgian and Dutch foreign ministers, Paul-Henri Spaak and Willem Beyen, was ‘These aren’t issues for our present work!’ But Spaak, whose over-riding aim was to secure agreement on the European Economic Community, did not ask for more discussion. Nor did Spaak or others reject the German idea. The meeting broke up with a triumph for Spaak. He had obtained a communiqué stating that a new stage in the building of Europe must be accomplished by developing common institutions, by a gradual amalgamation of the various national economies, the creation of a common market and the progressive coordination of social policies (Palayret, 1996). Hence, the European University proposal became, like the major issues of economic union, an item to be processed for the next meeting of the Six foreign ministers to consider the shape of an EEC and a European Atomic Energy Community. The top officials preparing the papers placed this ‘oddball’ proposal with the one other educational proposal — a French proposal for a research and training institute in the nuclear sciences, under the proposed Euratom Treaty. The foreign ministers did not query their officials’ choice when they met in Venice in May 1956 to agree that the Messina proposals should be transformed into Treaty form, one for Euratom, one for the EEC. The French opposed Hallstein’s idea. However, Hallstein, determined to see his idea carried through to the Treaty, compromised. He not only accepted the Euratom Treaty placing, he accepted a rather vague form of words and the recognition that this was an issue which would have to be sorted out when the Treaty reached the implementation phase. The result was two Articles on the Treaty of Rome (EAEC):

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318 European Journal of Education ‘Article 9 (2): An institution of university status shall be established: the way in which it will function shall be determined by the Council acting by qualified majority on a proposal from the Commission Article 216: The Commission proposals on the way in which the institution of university status referred to in Art 9 is to function shall be submitted to the Council within one year of the entry into force of the Treaty’. Resolving Conflicts of Vision and Role 1958–68 The Treaty achievement was fragile. On July 18, 1961, education became one of the issues which EC leaders meeting in Bonn agreed should not be part of Community competence. The six heads of state or government agreed that decision-making on education was to pass from Community institutions to national governments cooperating on an intergovernmental basis — i.e. operating as sovereign States, rather than States bound by Community rules. An EC venue could be made available for the purpose, in which ministers for Education and/or International Cultural Relations could meet as a Council. It should meet periodically to negotiate conventions on education matters. To arrive at the point of reversing the Treaty commitment to the creation of a university institution had taken three years. Difficulties had been evident from the start. Between 1958 and 1959, Ministers of Foreign Affairs and their diplomatic services — the almost exclusive government representatives in the early days of the EC — had had a series of meetings which had failed to produce agreement. It was evident that the six Member States had very different national university models, and the Treaty, by Article 216, left them to make the choice. Moreover, Hallstein and the powerful rectors’ organisations in the German Federal Republic were at odds on their conception of the university in the immediate post-war context. This difference of vision affected the discussions of 1958–59, at which Hallstein, as president of the EEC Commission, was present. Hallstein saw the university in general as ‘the most magnificent form of cultural institution created by the European mind’. He saw the European University in a somewhat more instrumental light. Post-war Europe needed more and better intellectual resources. It needed a common market of the intelligence to exploit the industries of the future. It needed a European-minded élite. But in the 1940s, in the immediate aftermath of Fascism, Nazism and the consequences of war, universities’ greatest desire was to escape the hand of the State or of international organisations (Rüegg, 1999). They wanted the institutional autonomy that gave them academic freedom. In any event, they saw themselves as already European. They were also concerned that resources that would have been better spent nationally might go to this privileged institution. There were, however, political factors which had come into play in late 1959 and which created a bargaining situation. The French continued to oppose the Community creation of a university. But they saw the advantage of a Europeanisation which might make their advanced training and research institutions more open to the world. The German government, the keenest supporter initially of the European University, had to step back since its action was strongly opposed by regional authorities — constitutionally the institutions responsible for education in the German Federal Republic — as well as the university rectors who feared a rival, and whom many suspected of conducting a vendetta (Hallstein, © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

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1972; Hirsch, 1988). The Belgian and Netherlands governments became noticeably less enthusiastic when their rectors put pressure on them. This left the Italians, who wanted the European University on Italian soil, and who were prepared to face some opposition from their rectors. The president of the Euratom Commission, Etienne Hirsch, appointed in April 1959, saw the opportunity to move forward. In October 1959, he succeeded in getting the agenda widened to include issues the EC might be responsible for, under the strategic guidance of academic boards. One issue was the creation of EC-wide links between national high level training and research institutes — as the French wished. A second, strongly supported by universities themselves, was the encouragement, via various Community incentives, of a European dimension in all higher education through mobility and exchange policies. These were incorporated in the Interim Report on the European University, presented to the Councils of the EEC and the EAEC (Palayret, 1996). There was no bargaining — in contrast — on whether it was appropriate to have a Community legal base for a European University (and an atomic energy treaty at that) and how the Europeanisation of higher education might be funded. The French were adamantly opposed. In 1960–61, under General de Gaulle, they mounted a campaign culminating in the Fouchet Plan of February 1961 for a strong policy of inter-governmental cooperation as a way of preventing the EC encroaching on non-Treaty areas. Though foreign affairs and defence were the obvious areas to be preserved for national sovereignty, the education, science and culture sectors were also key to this conception. In July 1961, the Bonn Summit confirmed the new direction and provided the design for intergovernmental decision-making in education. Left with sole responsibility for trying to keep the European University project in being, the Italians, as their ambassador said, did not think Bonn was a ‘bonne décision’ for them. Making a Deal on Cooperation and the European University, 1969–71 Eight years later, a Franco-Italian deal emerged on the Bonn commitment to the principle of EC educational cooperation and Italian proposals for a solution of the European University issue.This led to agreement from the other Member States to two decisions in 1971. One was the first formal act of Ministers of Education of the EC, on November 16, 1971 agreeing to cooperate on educational issues (Council, 1988). The other, which preceded the meeting, was an inter-governmental settlement on the European University. Ministers, sitting as representatives of their national governments, agreed to set up a European University Institute in Florence. It was a pale reflection of the original European University proposal for a full university. But for the Italians, who were providing the land, it meant that the institution would be run and financed by all the signatories collectively. The immediate turning point had been the Hague Summit of November 1969 called to ‘complete, widen and deepen the Community’. General de Gaulle’s sudden retirement from the French presidency on 27 April 1969 opened up the opportunity for the new leadership of France and Germany — Georges Pompidou and Willy Brandt — to settle with the other four Member States issues de Gaulle had refused to entertain, such as the admission of the UK to the Community. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

320 European Journal of Education The Hague Summit was a focusing event for policy ideas in general, including education, floated in the expectation that the Community as a whole was going to be driven by a new dynamic. Universities as represented by Europe-minded associations were enthusiastic. The rectors, by then grouped in the Conférence des Recteurs Européens (CRE), accepted the EC was an institution making policy which would affect them, starting with recognition of qualifications (Rüegg, 1999). As for the Ministers of Education, they had never entirely rejected the idea that the EC could play a role in the cooperative development of higher education — nor forgotten that they needed European-minded people to run the Community, although they had met regularly in the 1960s under the aegis of the Council of Europe (Haigh, 1970). By 1969 — and after the student revolts of 1968 — the French made explicit their wish for effective European education cooperation and their dissatisfaction with the Council of Europe as the mechanism. During the preparations for the Hague Summit, the French minister of education in 1969, Olivier Guichard, seized the opportunity to launch the idea of a European Centre for the Development of Education as a common resource for systems in the grip of ‘an intellectual and institutional crisis’. Guichard’s concerns were also European. In his view, the Community’s future would be determined by how Member States prepared in terms of ‘educating and training those people who would tomorrow run Europe’. He introduced a new idea. Coordinating this work demanded ‘more than intermittent meetings of various committees. It needs a permanent team with contacts between different administrations and the power and the means to make recommendations to responsible ministers’ (my italics).The heads of government responded to this new demand by asserting their view that ‘creative Community action’ could only be a success if the young were associated. They also affirmed the ‘need to safeguard in Europe an exception source of development, progress and culture’. An effect of the Guichard proposal, combined with the Hague Summit communiqué, was to precipitate the Commission into action. It set about organising its policy machine for expansion into a new policy domain. Altiero Spinelli, one of the most strategically minded commissioners, and Commissioner for Industry and Technology, bid for control of this operation. He was determined that a policy machine, however basic, would have some policy-making capacity, and that its mission would be clear. ‘Higher education and education were bound to become more important (“porteur de l’avenir”) in the wake of the Hague summit decision to work for economic and monetary union.’ Beating off a rival bid to manage the issue from within the Commission, Spinelli was able to establish a rudimentary bureaucracy of two Groups (Education and Teaching) — to be supported by four policy-level staff — and a Group (Coordination). The task of the two groups was to: (i) organise cooperation, the exchange of information and coordination of activities undertaken in the DirectoratesGenerals dealing with teaching and the education of young people and adults in all their aspects and (ii) conduct studies and encourage reflection and proposals to the Commission, from relevant services taking a global view of problems, and ensuring coherence between short-term action and long-term vision. Spinelli did not achieve his ends without concern being expressed by Commissioners over the principle of the Community extending its activities to education. Foreshadowing later disputes, the Commissioners’ private offices asked at a meeting in that the Commission was not encroaching on Member State © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

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prerogatives. Emile Nöel, the Commission’s Secretary-General, and an ally of Spinelli, reassured them about the role envisaged: Elle ne saurait être confondue avec le développement de l’enseignement et des systèmes d’enseignement dans les Etats-Membres. Furthermore, there was no way the Commission was going to take the lead in the negotiations for the Guichard centre — that was in the hands of the national diplomatic delegations. But these events opened up opportunities for Commission-led development after Enlargement. The first step was to help organise the first meeting of Ministers of Education and the resolution on cooperation. Spinelli’s second step after the Ministers’ meeting was to commission an expert report to clarify policy options from Professor Henri Janne. The expert was a former minister of education in Belgium, a noted social scientist and chairman of the education section of a big futurology exercise conducted by the European Cultural Foundation.

Creating the Policy Design for EC Education 1973–76 From 1973 we are into events which are familiar in the literature (Neave, 1984; Beukel, 1994; McMahon, 1996; Field 1998). The two main decisions of the years 1973–76 were the Resolution of the Ministers of Education meeting on June 6, 1974 which set the principles for cooperation (Council, 1988), and the Resolution of the Council and the Ministers of Education meeting within the Council of 9 February 1976 to create an action programme in the field of education (Council, 1988) — seen as the beginning of a real Community engagement (McMahon, 1995). In June 1974, the Ministers agreed the priority topics on which they should try to cooperate and for which they would work ‘by progressive stages’ and ‘in accordance with a procedure to be laid down’ with the following priorities for cooperation:





The promotion of closer relations between educational systems in Europe Increased cooperation between institutions of higher education Better possibilities for academic recognition of diplomas and period of study Encouragement of the freedom of movement and mobility of teachers, students and research workers, in particular by the removal of administrative and social obstacles to the free movement of such persons, and by the improved teaching of foreign languages.

The criteria for cooperation to be respected were that:








the programme of cooperation . . . whilst reflecting the progressive harmonisation of the economic and social policies of the Community must be adapted to the specific objectives and requirement of this field on no account must education be regarded merely as a component of economic life education cooperation must make allowance for the traditions of each country and the diversity of their respective educational policies and systems

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harmonisation of these systems or policies cannot therefore be considered an end in itself this cooperation must not hinder the exercise of the powers conferred on the institutions of the European Communities.

The Action Programme Resolution of 1976 unpacked the issues agreed under the Ministers’ resolution of June 1974 and expanded them into a programme consisting of 7 themes and 33 points for action. The higher education cooperation proposals, matching the network ideas which academics and rectors supported, included the idea of joint programmes of study and of research in which institutions set the rules for cooperation between themselves. Some schemes were already in existence, demonstrating the ‘bottom-up’ cooperation in which universities, as autonomous institutions, believed. The programme, as Jones described it, included ‘soft’ or cooperation-based European topics, such as mutual understanding of education systems of the Community, and language teaching — but also ‘social’ topics linked to EC law such as the education of migrant workers and their families, and the transition of young people from education to working life, and permitting access to Community resources. What my account can add to the literature is some light on the policy-making challenge to get the ideas and institutional reforms which underpinned these decisions on to the ministers’ agenda. For Spinelli was right. One of the consequences of the 1973 Enlargement was that the Commission had the opportunity to play a larger role. The bureaucratic structure for higher education and education had been strengthened as part of the general reorganisation of the Commission following Enlargement. Education had been given a Division in its own right, had been placed within a new DG for Research, Science and Education at the demand of the new Commissioner whose title was Commissioner for Research, Science and (for the first time) Education. The major turnover in personnel brought ambitious individuals into policymaking and, furthermore, individuals who had not experienced the difficulties of the 1960s. The new personnel included Ralf Dahrendorf, the new Commissioner, a well-known sociologist and former junior minister of foreign affairs in the Federal Republic government up to 1970; Alan Bath, Head of the new Education and Training Directorate; and Hywel Ceri Jones, the Head of the new Education Division. Jones was the first educationist to be given the chance to work on the education portfolio — he was a trained teacher who had become an administrator at the innovative University of Sussex. The first task had been to prepare draft policy guidelines — both ideas and instruments to use — for approval at the second meeting of Ministers of Education. Here Jones was up against the legacy of Spinelli — the report delivered just after they took office in which Professor Janne was to define a Community policy. Janne, who had questioned 30 or so eminent educationists, including academics and rectors, saw an ‘irreversible’ movement towards recognising ‘an educational dimension of Europe and . . . an educational policy at EC level. He proposed a Community policy compensatory and complementary to national policies’ in which he thought ‘an operation of ‘approximation’ or ‘harmonisation’ of the policies — carried out with the necessary prudence — is inevitable’. Dahrendorf and Jones had been horrified by the mention of harmonisation. Jones thus had to develop an alternative, which he did in the Commission © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

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Communication, Education in the European Community (COM (74)253). His views, like Janne, were based on the vision of the Community as a complement not a competitor to national action. But harmonisation was explicitly ruled out. However, since education had a place ‘in the process of development towards European Union’, it was, said the Commission document, essential to work with the university community and through links to other EC policy domains, including the environment, industry, social affairs, and the regional policies the EC had begun to talk about. The document illustrated opportunities for intervention on education with Treaty and non-Treaty instruments, in collaboration with other policies (e.g. the European Social Fund) and through more dynamic forms of cooperation which used Community facilities to get initial movement. Among the issues to be considered were admission of EC students to universities in another European country and ways of strengthening the research and scholarship links between universities. The most appealing propositions to the universities were for EC-funded trans-national linkages between small groups of institutions, to create Joint Study Programmes for all staff to visit each other under a scheme called Short Study Visits. It was also a mechanism for getting round the difficulties of different admission rules and different approaches to fees. Under the Joint Study Programmes, the contracting parties signed up to reciprocity. But it was attractive too. Associated with the policy ideas were proposals for an innovative policy advisory body — the Education Committee. Uniquely among EC policy advisory structures at the time, it was neither a Commission nor a Council body, it had dual membership. It preserved Jones’ idea of a platform for Commission innovation. It respected Council dominance in an area of national sovereignty. Ministerial acceptance of the essential of the Communication, Education in the European Community, provided the go-ahead for Jones to negotiate the Action Programme. His thinking at this period had been sharpened by contact with the European Cultural Foundation, a foundation interested in putting funds into education. The ECF team closely linked to an education futurology exercise, Europe 2000, was, like Jones, in favour of using the EC to aid national education innovation. The ECF group included the political scientist, Ladislav Cerych, head of the OECD higher education unit, who later would be director of the Paris-based European Institute of Education and Social Policy, associated with the ECF. Once the Action Programme was approved, Cerych and his new ECF recruit, Alan Smith, ran the development work for the Joint Study Programmes. Another was Raymond Georis, just promoted to be ECF Secretary-General, and great enthusiast for Europeanising education, and ready to recommend to his board concrete support for such initiatives as the European Institute. A further issue which deeply concerned Jones was how to secure funding for EC policy initiatives. ‘Money was the key to development’, as he wrote later (Fogg & Jones, 1985). If he was to secure action, he needed to secure funding. In addition to working with the ECF — in the line of encouraging others to carry out work the Commission would like to see — he was also exploring solutions under EC rules. Jones’ Action programme strategy of presenting a package consisting of Treaty and non-Treaty items enabled him to attract the sympathy of the European Parliament for some development funding. ‘This wasn’t theology,’ says Jones. ‘It was a way of ensuring we could get Community funding for a good cause’ (interview). © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

324 European Journal of Education Developing the Erasmus Proposal, 1977–1987 It was ten years before the Community institutions would work on, and approve, a fully-fledged and financed EC decision — the Erasmus Decision (Council). The judicial form of the Action Programme had provided the Commission with the two tools necessary to advance policy activity — some financial resources and links to full EC procedures — but only in a very limited way. The Commission Communication had outlined three objectives: (i)

to enable a growing number of students (at least 10% by 1992) to acquire first hand experience of life in another Member State through a recognised period of study abroad (The final legal text removed the reference to a target figure) (ii) to ensure the development of a pool of graduates with direct experience of intra-Community cooperation, as a means of providing a broader basis for intensified economic and social cooperation in the Community (iii) to strengthen the ties between citizens of the various Member States with a view to consolidating the concept of a People’s Europe (a report to the European Council in 1984). Building on the Joint Study Programmes, the Commission proposed a new form of partnership on the basis of reciprocity. There were provisions for academic mobility, joint curriculum development and credit transfer. A new phase of policy-making had opened up with the shift from developmental Action Programme to prospective Erasmus Decision. The Action programme implementation had been followed by a battle with the Council of Ministers which stopped the Council for Education meeting for the two years 1978 and 1979. Parallel discussions among the Commissioners had produced a dissuasive ruling on policy action in such Treaty ‘Grey Areas’ as education in September 1978 (Corbett, 2002). The conflict over the scope for EC action on education and higher education had led to another Jones initiative. Concerned that any new action on education would have to be strictly inter-governmental and non-dynamic, he judged the best way to pursue education policy-making at Commission level was indirectly, linked to vocational training. This required negotiating a move to the Social Affairs DG; the advantage was reporting to the Social Affairs Council which was enthusiastic about taking decisions. By the early 1980s the most successful of the Action Programme measures were the EC-funded Joint Study Programmes and the Short Study Visits schemes — part of the programme of cooperation in higher education.They were not Jones’ priority: he wanted the spotlight on a programme on improving the transition from school to work. But the programme had been taken up enthusiastically by academics in a number of universities who liked the European dimension and the staff development. But the pilot projects also began to attract enthusiastic political notice — the Ministers of Education in 1983 who advocated twinning; the European Council leaders in 1983 and 1984, the ad hoc committee on a People’s Europe which reported in 1985. Thus, in 1985, when a new Commission was appointed under Jacques Delors, and Jones met the new Commissioner for Education, Peter Sutherland, the Joint Study Programmes came up as an idea for development as a draft EC © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

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Decision. Sutherland said he would fight for it in the Commission on condition it got developed in a year. But while Sutherland was enthusiastic about a modern revival of the ‘fine medieval tradition of mobility of scholars between centres of learning’, he also wanted it explicit that Erasmus (as it was already called) would be a programme which ‘dovetailed with the Single Market policy focus of the Commission’. With the decision to prepare draft programmes, an important part of the preparatory work on the Erasmus decision moved into the Commissioner’s — political — domain. It was handled at cabinet level by a Frenchman, Michel Richonnier. He astonished Jones and Cerych’s former assistant Alan Smith, who was running the Joint Study Programmes. He wanted them to think in terms of a budget not 20% or 30% bigger than the pilot programmes but 200% bigger. He kept saying to us ‘Think Big! If we wanted to succeed’ recalls Jones. A project so close to decision is always vulnerable to unexpected events. In February 1985, the European Court of Justice ruling on the Gravier case (ECJ 293/83) established that university education included vocational education or training, and precipitated a review of the legal strategy for the decision. The ECJ ruling made it possible to present a draft decision for Erasmus, and the sister programme Comett, being developed at the same time, on the basis of the Treaty EEC Article 128 which related to the implementation of a common vocational training policy and had the procedural advantage of being taken by simple majority. The alternative was the more burdensome procedure of Article 235, which allowed for approval for a policy for which the Community did not have specific competence, provided the Council acted unanimously. Despite their conviction that there had to be a good political case for the Erasmus and the parallel Comett programmes, Sutherland, his Cabinet, and Jones, were attracted to Article 128. In Jones’ view the political case had been established long before the Gravier case — at the European Council meetings for example. Furthermore his directorate has consistently linked education policy issues with training. In his view ‘We knew we had so much support by then. You could be pragmatic about the legal choice’. In the end they backed both sides. The final communication on the Erasmus decision reflected its citizenship dimension. The legal text of the decision talked about Erasmus as training. The process by which the Ministers of Education made their decision on Erasmus was programmed to last for a year. In fact, it started in January 1986 and concluded in June 1987. The multiple Commission ideas on Erasmus caused no problem. It was the proposed legal base and the funding of what Jacques Delors called ‘this little programme’ which proved divisive. The programme became operative very quickly. By 2002, there had been a million applications for programme grants to students, making Erasmus one of the Community’s most successful attempts to touch directly a large public. But it was not until the Treaty of Maastricht that the questions of authority for legislation and resources were resolved. Postscript The Erasmus programme (like the Comett programme a year earlier) had signified that the EC had been able to devise a distinctive cooperation policy — unlike anything on the international scene. What had started as a venture to overcome © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

326 European Journal of Education hurdles of different regulations in the different national systems of higher education had become properly resourced and designed as a Community cooperative programme. It heralded an intensive bout of programme making in the period up to 1992. In the years 1987–1991 there were number of legal challenges on higher education issues. Several arose from the Gravier judgement, and one from the Commission challenged the double legal base of the Erasmus Decision. When the opportunity of rethinking the EC’s legal base in terms of the EU arose with the inter-governmental conferences which led to the Treaty of Maastricht, the Commission President, Delors, and several Member State governments took the view that education needed a Treaty base which firmly anchored it within a subsidiarity framework. This was to lead to the Maastricht Treaty Articles 126 on education and 127 on training (the figures changed to 149 and 150 by the Treaty of Amsterdam). But, as through much of its history, the idea of EC higher education was influenced by European dynamics of interlocking developments. One was the French initiative in 1998, in partnership with the CRE — renamed the Europen Universities Association (EUA) — which became the Bologna process. This is the project to develop a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) by 2010 so that there can be effective mobility and far more international access to the universities of all European countries (38 at the latest count) due to a similar profile of broadly similar undergraduate and postgraduate structures and an effective credit transfer system. This move to balance diversity and uniformity go in parallel with the EU’s own efforts to create a European Research Area also by 2010. At the same time Delors’ strategic objective as expressed in the 1993 White Paper, Growth, competitiveness and employment has contributed to the ambitious ‘Lisbon’ strategy to develop the ‘Europe of Knowledge’ as a stimulus to greater economic growth and social cohesion, agreed in 2000. Higher education and education in general have moved from the margins to the centre of EU concerns (Shaw, 1999). Ideas, Institutions and Events This account has set out to explain the development of the EC’s higher education policy of cooperation in two distinctive ways. It has used historiographical methods to anchor the account in a precise historical context and has drawn on political science to conceptualise an evolution in terms of the policy process. We should not forget that without the idea of the university as a institution creating and diffusing knowledge and democratic values in a way which is intrinsically international, this policy history of higher education could not have existed. The universities, collectively through the Conférence des Recteurs Européens, were effectively referees of the EC process, in practice able to veto or to support. In focusing on the specific ‘story’ of policy change as it has been told here, we see ideas and institutions interacting. The process unrolling, not in terms of planned change, but in terms of opportunities created by external events to advance a new or modified policy idea and thus contribute to policy change. In this ‘story’, the opportunities to change or modify the EC vision of higher education most often lay in the dynamics of the larger EU project. Thus, one key period was the years 1955–57 between the Messina meeting and the Treaty of © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

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Rome, during which the European University proposal was made in which the six members of the European Coal and Steel Community faced the problem of how to extend the mechanisms of Western European unity. A second key period was the years 1969–73, the period between the Hague Summit and Enlargement, where the problem was to re-launch a Community in difficulties.That period confirmed that the EC considered education a policy domain and enabled the policy design work to be developed. A third key period was 1984–85, which coincided with the Mitterrand-Kohl partnership and the arrival of Jacques Delors as Commission president, and which enabled EC higher education cooperation to develop from pilot status into a fully-fledged programme. This was once again an effort to build in a new dynamic to the European project, following the difficulties of the Thatcher years over the British budget question, and the recognition that the economy had become increasingly global. The fourth period, which is hinted at in this account is 1989–91, the period of the intergovernmental conferences leading to the Treaty of European Union (Maastricht) which made it possible to formalise intergovernmental and EC projects as complementary, rather than in inevitable competition as the sceptics assume. This was a period in which the EC level problem was the need to reassess the European Union’s objectives and mechanisms: where to advance, where to put on the brakes. The one exceptional period in which the dynamics of the EC and of the higher education/education activity were less obviously linked was the period of a policy design — regarded by politicians as a technical development and typical of a phase seen by political analysts as one in which policy entrepreneurs enjoy something of a monopoly to develop their ideas (Baumgartner & Jones, 1994). For the opportunities to be exploited, it has needed well-placed and motivated individuals to act as advocates for the policy idea, since the dynamics of policy development and the political framework are different (Kingdon, 1984). There is no space here to develop the argument as to why Hallstein, Hirsch and the other policy entrepreneurs made the effort to intervene, nor what made them effective (Corbett, 2002). It can, however, be seen from this account that in each of the policy cycles which have culminated in decisions, motivated individuals have taken entrepreneurial action to advance an EC higher education policy activity.There was Walter Hallstein on behalf of his government at Messina in 1955 advancing an idea of a Community-created European University; Etienne Hirsch, President of the Euratom Commission, in 1959 developing an ambitious EC alternative to the European University proposal, seeing a place in the scene for all higher education institutions; Olivier Guichard, French Minister of Education in 1969 developing a new idea, that of using the EC as a resource for national policy; Hywel Ceri Jones in 1974 modifying and making the Guichard idea more complex and more in Community interest. The Jones idea, as it survived into the ministerial resolution of 1974 and the Action Programme of 1976, had at least three strands. It certainly encompassed the EC aiding education in the general cause of making people more Europeanminded. But its more sectorally strategic ambitions were to give EC support to institutional innovation in higher education (the Joint Study Programmes and Short Study Visits, the development of a credit transfer system) and other educational domains (language learning, administration) etc. It saw EC-supported educational activity as supporting the EC’s larger policies (the education of © Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003

328 European Journal of Education migrant workers’ children, part of the EC commitment to mobility of labour; the pressures to advance mutual recognition of diplomas, part of EC policy on the freedom of establishment as well as an issue in university mobility). In 1985, when there seemed a real possibility of obtaining an EC Decision on education, the vision of EC higher education was modified. The prospect of decisions creates alliances. So with Erasmus. The development of information technology in the mid 1980s and the increasing sectoral links between education and training, and, in 1985, Delors’ presentation of the single market strategy for the EC, led Jones — who enjoyed an exceptional policy longevity — along with his ‘policy sponsor’ the Commissioner Peter Sutherland, and Sutherland’s adviser, Michel Richonnier, to present Erasmus to Commisissioners as part of the EC’s ‘human resources’ strategy as much as an educational venture. The Gravier judgement that university education was vocational training, and thus had a Treaty link, naturally led those on the point of presenting a choice to decision-makers to see Erasmus as a training opportunity. That is not to say that those who have been ‘Europeanised’ by Erasmus followed these twists and turns. Conclusion The pre-decision process of policy-making within the EC is little understood since much of the documentation is unpublished and officials are often bound by secrecy rules. Challenging an assumption that the pre-decision process does not matter, this study’s focus on the pre-decision processes of agenda setting and alternative specification in EC higher education has made the case that higher education, if not education in general, was an issue of intense interest to EC decision-makers from Day 1 of the Community’s history. This study has, furthermore, shown that by conceptualising the policy process in terms of intervening events as they affect the evolution of an idea or an institution can produce a plausible account of the creation and development of EC policy activity in higher education. There remain more general questions of how much the interpretation presented here matters outside the academic realms of political science. It should be said that this study falls into the category of those which aim to contribute to policy learning. I used the Kingdon conceptualisation because — in addition to the advantages cited earlier — it structures the process in a way that is familiar to policy actors. I studied the process over a long time span because it is likely to show changes in ideas, institutions and policy. I would thus suggest that a knowledge of EC higher education policy activity in the 1950s and 1960s helps to understand the current important developments for European higher education, such as those associated with Bologna and Lisbon. For what this study has shown is that the well-known tirades against the ‘tyranny’ of Brussels are a grossly over-simplified account of how EC policy has evolved in higher education and may evolve more generally. Policy issues do not advance simply by grand-standing in time for the evening news. To obtain agreement on issue definition, to find a viable policy solution and to hook the two together are often a long process, which requires persuasion and persistence by those involved, as well as the political skills of exploiting opportunities.

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NOTE The material in this article is drawn from a recently completed political science thesis (MAT Corbett, Ideas, institutions and policy entrepreneurship in European Community higher education, 1955–95, University of London 2002) and will be developed in a forthcoming book to be published by Palgrave. The author wishes to thank the Florence section of EUSSIRF (European Union Social Science Information Research Facility) for a TMR grant (Training and Mobility of Researchers) in 2001. BIBLIOGRAPHY Official Publications COUNCIL OF THE EUROPEAN COMMUNITIES European Educational Policy Statements, third edition (Luxembourg, Office for Official Publications of the EC). EC Bulletin, periodical monthly. Selected issues European Community Historical Archive (ECHA) Selected archives Le Magazine, periodical from the DG Education and Culture, published from 1994 Official Journal, daily TEICHLER, U. & MAIWORM, F. (1997) The Erasmus Experience, major findings of the Erasmus evaluation project (Luxembourg, Office for Official Publications of the EC). Select secondary sources BAUMGARTNER, F. & JONES, B. (1993) Agendas and Instability in American Politics (Chicago, University of Chicago Press) BEUKEL, E. (1994) Reconstructing Integration Theory, Nordic Journal of International Studies 29, pp. 33–54. CERYCH, L. (1999) The CRE, NGOs and European integration, CRE-Action, 115, special issue ‘40 ans d’histoire’ (Geneva, CRE). CORBETT, A. (2002) Ideas, Institutions and Policy Entrepreneurship in European Community Higher Education, 1955–95 (University of London, Unpublished PhD thesis). CRAM, L. (1994) The European Commission as a multi-organisation, Journal of European Public Policy, 21(2). DE WITTE, B. (Ed) (1989) The Community Law of Education (Baden-Baden, Nomos). FIELD, J. (1998) European Dimensions, Education, Training and the European Union (London, Jessica Kingsley). FOGG, K. & JONES, H. (1985) Educating the European Community — ten years on, European Journal of Education, 20(2–3). HAIGH, A. (1970) A Ministry of Education for Europe (London, Geo Harrap). HALLSTEIN, W. (1969) Der unvollendete Bundesstaat [Europe in the Making, trans 1972] (Dusseldorf ). HIRSCH, E. (1988) Ainsi va la vie (Lausanne, Fondation Jean Monnet pour l’Europe).

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330 European Journal of Education JARVIS, F. (1972) The Educational Implications of Membership of the EEC (London, National Union of Teachers). KINGDON, J. (1984) Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies (Boston, Little, Brown). MCMAHON, J. (1995) Education and Culture in European Community Law (London, Athlone Press). MOSCHONAS, S. (1998) Education and Training in the EU (Aldershot, Ashgate). NEAVE, G. (1984) Education and the EEC (Stoke on Trent, Trentham Books). PALAYRET, J.-M. assisted by SCHREURS, R. (1996) A University for Europe, Prehistory of the European University Institute in Florence (1948–1976) (Rome, Presidency of the Council of Ministers, Dept of Information and Publishing). PIERSON, P. (1996) The path to integration, a historical institutionalist analysis, Comparative Political Studies, 29, pp. 123–163. RÜEGG, W. (1999) La CRE: autonomie et cadre européen, CRE-Action 115, special issue ‘40 ans d’histoire’ (Geneva, CRE). SHAW, J. (1999) From the margins to the center: education and training law and policy from ‘Casagrande’ to the ‘Knowledge Society, in: P. CRAIG & G. DE BURCA (Eds) European Community Law: an evolutionary perspective (Oxford, Oxford University Press). THELEN, K. & STEINMO, S. (1992) Historical institutionalism in comparative politics, in: S. STEINMO, THELEN, K. & LONGSTRETH, F. (Eds) Structuring Politics: historical institutionalism in comparative analysis (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press). WALLACE, H. & WALLACE, W. (Eds) 1996 Policy-making in the European Union (Oxford, Oxford University Press).

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