Higher education in the single market between (trans)national integration and supranationalisation: exploring the european universities initiative

ABSTRACT

While higher education is not a ‘classical’ single market domain, considerable efforts have been made at the European level to advance integration. The European Higher Education Area (and the European Research Area have represented important drivers in the construction of a single market for education, despite uneven implementation and a lack of convergence around common values. This paper explores a very recent initiative in the field of higher education, i.e. the European Universities Initiative (EUI), characterised by a hybrid type of university collaboration based on transnational alliances linking education, research and innovation. Using the lenses of the ‘governance architecture framework’, the paper shows that the EUI can act as a catalyst for renewed integration in higher education through a multi-tiered, flexible mode of cooperation among different actors’ constellations. However, the paper also identifies a potential alternative trajectory of integration with (trans)national institutions as key actors driving the alliances.

KEYWORDS:

• Single market
• European Integration
• Higher Education
• European University Initiative
• governance
• European Commission

Introduction

While higher education falls under the competence of the member states, it has acquired since the launch of the Lisbon Strategy in 2000 a strategic status as an instance of the single market, being also ‘deeply connected to (and dependent on) the EU’s “hard” free movement rights deriving from EU citizenship and the internal market’ (Garben, 2020, 337; Sin and Tavares 2018). The two different – yet interlinked – pillars that constitute European higher education are the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and the European Research Area (ERA). Whereas the EHEA was conceived as the culmination of the so-called intergovernmental Bologna Process and aimed at the creation of a barrier-free EHEA by 2010 characterised by achieving convergence in terms of the compatibility and comparability of academic qualifications (Sin and Tavares 2018), the purpose of the ERA – developed as a supranational initiative within the Lisbon Strategy – was that of breaking down barriers in order to implement a single market for knowledge, research and innovation (Chou and Gornitzka 2014; Ulnicane 2015).

The study of the Bologna Process, and of the EHEA as its main objective, has attracted the interest of numerous scholars who have highlighted its successes and failures (Papatsiba 2006; Veiga, Magalhães, and Amaral 2015; Vukasovic and Stensaker 2018; Curaj, Deca, and Pricopie 2020). Looking at the shortcomings of the Bologna Process as the starting point of analysis, this paper examines a very recent initiative in the field of European higher education, namely the European Universities Initiative (hereinafter referred to as EUI), presented by the Commission as one of the flagship initiatives included in the EU’s new European Education Area project (Kushnir 2021). The purpose of the EUI is to create a new hybrid type of collaborative scheme based on transnational alliances and involving cooperation in terms of student and staff mobility, joint degrees, and governance among European universities, linking research, innovation and competitiveness (Orr, Unangst, and de Wit 2019; Gunn 2020).

To address the key question(s) of this special issue with reference to the dynamics of single market integration, the paper asks: what role does the European Universities Initiative play in advancing (and enhancing) market integration in European higher education? The argument of the paper is that, differently from the limitations of the Bologna Process with respect to achieving coordination in terms of governance, low mobility, and shared values, the EUI can play a significant role in promoting renewed market integration in European higher education. On the one hand, the EUI incorporates the aims of the EHEA and the ERA into a common European dimension by linking education, research and innovation within a common transnational approach. On the other hand, the EUI seems to be characterised by ideational coherence, political commitment, and a hybrid type of governance that combines a EU top-down dimension, under the policy coordination of the Commission, and a bottom-up approach in which alliances are formed by multiple sets of actors, including public and private institutions, civil society organisations, and municipalities (Gunn 2020; Estermann, Bennetot Pruvot, and Stoyanova 2021). To elaborate the argument, the paper combines the approach of differentiated integration (Holzinger and Schimmelfennig 2012) with the analytical concept of ‘governance architectures’ (developed by Borrás and Radaelli (2011). Whereas the approach of differentiated integration aptly fits with the peculiarities of higher education as a domestic policy field with member states working towards shared objectives in a flexible way (Stubb 1996), the concept of ‘governance architectures’ offers a lens of analysis that considers policy and governance together with the role of ideas and discourse in the policy process (Borrás and Radaelli 2011), thus enabling capturing the depth and market integration ambitions of the EUI itself.

Although it is too early to provide a comprehensive assessment of whether the EUI will de facto achieve renewed integration under the political entrepreneurship of the Commission or whether we might witness in the future a strengthening (and asymmetry) of the bottom-up approach of the alliances in a transnational, rather than a supranational, trajectory, it seems that the EUI points to a changing landscape for European higher education. Similarly to the case of the European Defence Fund examined in this special issue by Sabatino, and to Cini and Czulno’s examination of the ‘Digital Single Market Strategy’, the EUI is considered to have the potential to become a ‘game changer’ for European higher education, with the Commission providing soft coordination and funding support as well.

Overall, the paper contributes to the topics of this special issue by illustrating how the key dimensions of the governance arrangements of multilevel governance and private–public interactions can be accounted for in studying a least likely case of market integration. Specifically, the article proposes insights into higher education, i.e. a policy area that has often been characterised by strong domestic competence and perceived to be an area of national diversity (De Wit and Verhoeven 2001), thus making it a less plausible candidate for the renewal or resilience of market integration, and a more suitable one for renationalisation.

Though in the case of the EUI the interplay between supranational joint cooperation and transnational competition among the alliances is an area requiring further work, it is possible to identify a trajectory of further impetus to single market integration, with the Commission implementing an innovative policy design that combines ideational and organisational coordination with the provision of financial support but that, nonetheless, requires collective actions in the multiple private–public configurations of the alliances as well.

The paper is structured as follows. The following section briefly outlines the analytical framework informed by the approach of differentiated integration and by the concept of ‘governance architectures’. Following a brief examination of the key challenges and shortcomings of the Bologna Process, the bulk of the paper explores the EUI. In particular, it considers the coherence of the initiative in terms of ideas, the member states’ diversity, and the nature of the governance process in place. The final section of the paper discusses the key findings and suggests potential trajectories for the EUI in driving (or not) integration in European higher education.

Analytical framework: differentiated integration and ‘governance architectures’

The diversity of the EU has often been emphasised by scholars of European studies. In particular, the definition of the EU as a ‘system of differentiated integration’ (Leuffen, Rittberger, and Schimmelfennig 2012) has been used to characterise the multi-speeds and variable geometry of the integration of specific policy areas. Differentiated integration refers to ‘the possibility for different member states to have different rights and obligations with respect to certain common policy areas’ (Kölliker 2001, 125), thus accommodating their preferences. Differentiated integration is a process in which the member states pursue common policies while moving at different speeds in achieving different objectives. It can include formal and informal arrangements and conferring on actors’ room for action in deciding what is appropriate to achieve together and what can be done at the domestic level. As argued by Holzinger, the flexible cooperation underpinning the concept of differentiated integration is based on the principle of equivalence, thus allowing the flexible design of institutions, which, in turn, allows them to avoid leaving public good provisions to regulatory competition (Holzinger 2000). Ideational and institutional factors are the core ingredients of differentiated integration. National conceptions, preferences, and informal and formal norms shape the interactions among the different countries, which means that the value-driven or identity-driven demand behind differentiated integration plays a role therein (Adler-Nissen 2009). The theory of differentiated integration has been used to analyse the Bologna Process as a vehicle for flexible integration to highlight the cooperation and flexible design of institutions (Holzinger 2000; Furlong 2010; Holzinger and Schimmelfennig 2012, 296; Veiga, Magalhães, and Amaral 2015; Veiga 2019). For the scope of this paper, the approach of differentiated integration is employed as an overarching meta-framework to underline the variations and disparities between higher education institutions in the member states.

Most importantly, to illustrate what role the EUI plays in advancing (and enhancing) market integration and to operationalise the EUI alliances in terms of their policy design, the paper adopts Borras and Radaelli’s analytical concept of ‘governance architectures’ (Borrás and Radaelli 2011). Originally developed by the authors so as to capture the Lisbon Strategy as a case of how the complex, multilevel governance of supranational institutions interacts with single policy initiatives, ‘governance architectures’ are conceptualised as ‘strategic and long-term political initiatives of international organizations on cross-cutting policy issues locked into commitments about targets and processes’ (Borrás and Radaelli 2011, 464). As specific forms of institutional arrangements, ‘governance architectures’ possess ‘three main features; namely, they address complex problems from a strategic and holistic long-term perspective; they set substantive output-oriented goals, and they are implemented through a combination of old and new organizational structures within the international organization in question’ (Borrás and Radaelli 2011, 464).

In Borras and Radaelli’s conceptualisation, the term ‘architecture’ refers to ‘the cognitive as well as organizational dimensions’ of policy decisions (Borrás and Radaelli 2011, 468). Following this distinction, ‘governance architectures’ are characterised by two main components, namely an ideational and an organisational one. Regarding the ideational component, the authors specify that it includes a set of fundamental ideational repertoires, which are expressed in notions such as ‘governance’, ‘competitiveness’, ‘sustainability’, ‘knowledge-based society’, and, last but not least, the ‘market’ (Borrás and Radaelli 2011, 470; see also Jabko 2019). Not only do these repertoires have an overarching meaning in the sense of appealing to the ‘core raison d’etre of the international/supranational polity in question’, referring to the EU in the case analysed by them, they also combine a flexible and ambiguous (re)interpretation of old and new meanings (Borrás and Radaelli 2011, 470; Cino Pagliarello 2021). In addition, they are conveyed through a discourse that also contributes to legitimising specific policy solutions according to the hierarchical organisation of ideas and norms, as, for instance, in the case of competitiveness as ‘master-discourse of the Lisbon Strategy’ (Borrás and Radaelli 2011, 470).

With reference to the organisational component of ‘governance architectures’, Borras and Radaelli refer to the formal and informal organisational arrangements in which the ideational component is put into practice through a selection of policy instruments and their procedural requirements (Borrás and Radaelli 2011, 471). These organisational arrangements can include European institutions, such as the Commission or the European Parliament, and transnational forms of coordination. In contrast, the policy instruments can vary according to the specific policy action, ranging from hard law (as in the case of the European monetary union) to more soft forms of coordination – as in the case of higher education – such as the Open Method of Coordination (Borrás and Radaelli 2011, 471–472). In short, the analytical perspective suggested by Borras and Radaelli harmonises ideas and discourse with organisational and policy instruments, allowing the empirical analysis to focus simultaneously on specific developments in a well-defined policy area and on more general components of European governance. For the purposes of this paper, the perspective of ‘governance architectures’ has the advantage of focusing on the specific case of the EUI alliances (i.e. a well-defined policy area), which, in turn, helps to capture how the Commission created new incentivising structures for the national and transnational actors’ constellations of the institutions involved in the alliances’ configurations. The empirical basis of this exploratory paper, also given the recent launch of the EUI, consists in examining the official policy positions of these alliances (as stated on their websites and in their work programmes), official European documentation (including factsheets and reports released by the Commission), and secondary sources for the period 2017, wherein the idea was launched by Emmanuel Macron, till 2021.

Taking stock of the Bologna Process and the ‘governance architecture’ of the European Universities Initiative

The EHEA and the ERA: key challenges and shortcomings

In 1999, the Bologna Joint Declaration on harmonisation of the architecture of the European higher education system set in motion a process of creating convergence among European higher education institutions through the introduction of a system consisting of three (i.e. bachelor–master–doctorate) cycles to facilitate the mobility and improve the employability of students, as well as aiming at the creation of a EHEA by 2010 (Bologna Process, 1999). Conceived as an intergovernmental agreement in the spirit of the domestic nature of educational policy, the Bologna Process had the ultimate goal of facilitating students’ mobility and improving their employability. The Bologna Process has continued in spite of the EHEA’s official launch in March 2010 during the Budapest–Vienna Ministerial Conference (Garben 2020, 365). Differently from the Bologna Process, the ERA was established as a supranational initiative under the Lisbon Agenda of 2000. The key aim of the ERA was the creation of an educational space that would be able to embrace the free physical and non-material mobility of researchers, scientific knowledge, and technology (Banchoff 2002). Though the EHEA and the ERA reflect the ambiguity between Europeanisation aspirations and the preservation of national identities (Sin and Tavares 2018), they have, nevertheless, been embedded within the goals of the single market, thanks also to the role of the European Court of Justice in expanding the EU’s role on issues such as the field of regulated professions and the Directive on Professional Recognition (Kwikkers and van Wageningen 2012). In addition, the EU has expanded its role in terms of governance through the use of the soft method of the Open Method of Coordination to promote the exchange of good practices and monitoring activities (Keeling 2006).

The Bologna Process and its overall aim of establishing an EHEA has been pointed out as an example of flexible integration and, in a later phase of the process, as an illustration of the Europe à la carte model (Holzinger and Schimmelfennig 2012). Under the framework of Bologna, national higher education systems were invited to move at their own speed towards different objectives (e.g. the Bologna action lines) regarding the common policy of setting up the EHEA. However, research has shown that these movements at different speeds are not contributing to projecting a European view on the EHEA at the national level (Amaral et al. 2009; Veiga, Magalhães, and Amaral 2015). Similarly, despite the setup of several reforms and initiatives, the ERA has achieved limited success and there has been an uneven and fragmented implementation of its objectives in the member states, leading to divergence rather than convergence (European Commission2019a).

Overall, the EHEA and the ERA constitute a mixed story of success and failure due to the ‘confusion, chaos, [and] dense jungle of degrees, institutions and systems’; [this] is the single biggest obstacle to more mobility in Europe” and reflects ‘unfinished business’ (Gunn 2020, 66). On the one hand, due to the voluntary nature of this process, Bologna has been implemented by the signatory countries under different degrees (Bologna Process 2010), thus questioning whether a genuine convergence has been achieved in the governance configuration of higher education in Europe. On the other hand, students’ mobility – one of the EHEA’s key goals – does not seem to have increased substantially in terms of credit or degree mobility and ‘appears to be concentrated in a few countries and in universities of higher quality and with better reputations’ (Teichler 2017; Sanchez Barrioluengo and Flisi 2017, 51).

What is more, the EHEA, as originally envisaged in the Bologna Declaration of 1999, has not fully delivered its original aims. The Bologna Process has been embedded within national needs and priorities. Its very nature of being flexible and the voluntary process of connecting national reforms at the EU level have implied that the design is at the European level, but (most importantly) the implementation is left at the national and institutional levels (Sin, Veiga, and Amaral 2016). There seems to be convergence among scholarship around the overall process lacking a genuine sense of belonging to a European educational ‘space’. Indeed, little progress has been achieved in terms of convergence around common values. In contrast, the more formal aspects of the EHEA (namely the adoption of the bachelor/master model) can be considered a success story, while the opposite can be said regarding the adoption of common and shared values, including the free movement of students and staff (Jungblut, Maassen, and Elken 2020). This has also been recognised by the very actors who participated in the Bologna Process: at the Ministerial Conference held in Paris in 2018, the Ministers of Education agreed to extend transnational cooperation so as to increase the mobility of staff, students and researchers (Bologna Process 2018). In addition, the level of political representation of delegations from the member states has decreased over the years, thus suggesting increasing limited political salience of the EHEA, which has also been combined with the deterioration of aspects related to fundamental values such as academic freedom (Vukasovic, Jungblut, and Elken 2017; Jungblut, Maassen, and Elken 2020).

Other factors that might exacerbate the current ‘malaise’ of EHEA and ERA developments include Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand, Brexit has been a watershed event in the sense of not only depriving European universities of a relevant and reputable partner for research collaboration and knowledge exchanges but also challenging freedom of movement between Continental Europe and the UK (Corbett and Gordon 2018). On the other hand, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought a number of further challenges to teaching, research, and the funding of higher education (Ahlburg, 2020). With the Bologna Process, the EU has sought to forge a fragile unity through education, which is also currently challenged by the turn towards solutions at the national level. This might also lead to a return to EU nationalism, which seems to challenge the attempts to harmonise European higher education systems through international alliances(Brøgger and Karseth . These issues, combined with the fact that the differentiated integration of the Bologna Process has maintained and deepened asymmetries, rather than reducing them, have prompted a reconsideration and reconceptualization of European higher education, which is connected to a greater need for a ‘hard’ free movement right, which can only be achieved through the interconnection of European values and the internal market (Veiga, Magalhães, and Amaral 2015).

It is within this context and process of ‘unthinking the EHEA’ (Veiga 2019) that the launch of the EUI seems to emerge as a potential way in which to tackle the challenges of European higher education, as well as to cope with the current context of crisis.

The ‘governance architecture’ of the European Universities Initiative

In September 2017, during a speech delivered at Sorbonne University, French President Emmanuel Macron proposed the creation of ‘a network of universities across Europe with programmes that have all their students study abroad and take classes in at least two languages. These European universities will also be drivers of educational innovation and the quest for excellence’ (Macron 2017). Shortly after Macron’s speech, this proposal started to gain support at the European level. A document presented at the European Council meeting in Gothenburg in November 2017 picked up on Macron’s idea and advocated the development of strategic partnerships between higher education institutions, the creation of a European university network, and the joint delivery of university programmes ‘to reinforce and structure cooperation among higher education institutions’ (European Commission 2017). A month later, the European Council further endorsed the EUI by calling for ‘encouraging the emergence by 2024 of some twenty “European Universities”, consisting in bottom-up networks of universities across the EU which will enable students to obtain a degree by combining studies in several EU countries and contribute to the international competitiveness of European universities’ (European Council 2017). The Commission was remarkably quick in following up on the European Council’s recommendation by entrusting the Directorate-General Joint Research Centre (DG JRC) with the task of conducting a study mapping existing transnational partnerships among European higher education institutions in order to explore potential support for the idea (Karvounaraki et al. 2018, 2). The findings of this survey provided the Commission with important suggestions, especially with reference to the lack of mobility (particularly at the bachelor level) and the lack of sustainable funding for deepening transnational collaborations. In short, the feasibility study provided the Commission with important insights into the potential role of the EUI in filling ‘a needs gap in the current landscape of EU programmes’ (Karvounaraki et al. 2018, 24).

In addition, the EUI was also embedded within the launch in 2018 of a ‘European Education Area’ (hereinafter referred to as EEA) to foster ‘the full potential of education and culture’, and as a way in which to counteract the rivalry in research and innovation with countries such as China and the US (Council of the European Union 2018). Furthermore, the Council Resolution of November 2019 considered the EUI to be ‘a game-changing step forward in cross-institutional cooperation by offering various inspirational visions, models and themes for interaction to support the future development of the EEA in accordance with the changing needs of society’ (Council of the European Union, 2019). In 2019, the Commission selected the first 17 alliances of European universities (European Commission 2019b). As of October 2021, the EUI supports 41 university alliances comprising more than 280 universities across Europe.

Examining the EUI through the lens of the ‘governance architectures’ framework (Borrás and Radaelli 2011), three key elements can be detected: firstly, a shared, integrated, long-term joint strategy for education, linking research, innovation, and society at large; secondly, a European higher education inter-university campus on which all students and staff could move seamlessly (be it physically or virtually) between any of the partner institutions, leading to joint and flexible curricula; and, thirdly, European knowledge-creating teams of students, academics and other stakeholders who would be part of the alliances to address societal and other challenges in a multidisciplinary approach. As stated on the official European website of the EUI, European universities are ‘transnational alliances that will become the universities of the future, promoting European values and identity, and revolutionising the quality and competitiveness of European higher education’ (European Universities Initiative 2021). This suggests an ideational composition around a repertoire of ideas (Jabko 2019) that simultaneously embraces the goals of competitiveness and promotes a greater sense of European belonging and identity among the alliances’ partners. Evidence of this renewed integration spirit can be observed with respect to the positive reception that the EUI’s launch received in 2018, at which thousands of participants, including stakeholders, Vice-Rectors, Ministerial delegates, and representatives of research organisations, joined the information session held in Brussels. For instance, the EUI was welcomed as a ‘renaissance of the European spirit’ (Bromme and Oliver 2019), an opportunity to create a ‘truly university model’ (Hand 2019), a ‘common identity’ (Una Europa 2021), and a ‘counterweight to Harvard and Stanford’ (Bromme and Oliver 2019).

As forms of ‘governance architectures’, the EUI alliances include policy goals and strategies that emphasise a certain set of ideas and priorities. For instance, the call specifications for the EUI have been set up by the Commission through its Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA), and in consultation with the higher education and research sector, with privileged influence from the industry sector, as suggested by the keywords of the call, e.g. ‘innovation’, ‘excellence’ and ‘entrepreneurship’. As stated by Sophie Beernaerts, head of the Erasmus+ department of the EACEA, ‘We give you the frame – it’s up to you to design the European Universities’ (Kelly 2019). Her quote suggests how the Commission is advancing a shared discourse that is based on common problems that require common solutions, with the EU level presenting itself as the appropriate arena for hosting it. The ‘European’ leitmotiv of overarching integration is often stated in the mission statements of the different alliances. For example, the mission statement of Una Europa states that the alliance aims ‘to create a truly European inter-university environment, where outstanding research is continuously linked to transnational learning and innovative, critical thinking’ (Una Europa 2021); meanwhile, the mission statement of Circle U. mentions ‘keeping Europeans and our planet healthy, peaceful, democratic, and prosperous’ (Circle U 2021); and FORTHEM Alliance’s aims are ‘to become a reproducible model for both European and non-European universities that wish to develop similar new alliances’ (FORTHEM Alliance 2021). In addition, the transnational joint collaborations foreseen by the EUI seem to represent a path departure from the previous short-term-oriented phase of cooperation in higher education, as well as in terms of achieving a more long-term and sustainable level of collaboration, wherein the sense of ‘Europeanness’ is also highlighted by the small number of UK and Turkish universities that participate in the alliances (Gunn 2020). At the same time, the alliances are also characterised by heterogeneous actors’ constellations, which include high-ranking and elite universities and many regional and smaller universities, thus providing much broader participation in European higher education initiatives (see also European Commission, 2021 for a comprehensive list of the composition of each alliance).

The ideational-discursive component of the EUI alliances is deployed through a policy design reflecting a dual dimension of top-down and bottom-up governance coordination, including funding provision. The 41 alliances currently in place are backed by €287 million from the EU budget, with each alliance receiving up to €5 million from the Erasmus+ programme and up to €2 million from the Horizon 2020 programme for three years to start implementing their plans (European University Association 2020). In this respect, the Commission plays a significant role in terms of budget and coordination capacity of the alliances. Firstly, the funding has been provided by Erasmus+ and Horizon 2020/Europe and is meant to pool the alliances’ expertise, platforms and resources in order to offer common curricula or modules covering different disciplines. Additional funding is also foreseen by the Recovery and Resilience Facility, the European Structural and Investment Funds, and the InvestEU Fund (Council of the European Union 2021). Furthermore, the Commission is in charge of the monitoring and review of the alliances, including supporting active exchange schemes between academia and industry (Council of the European Union 2021, 54–56). Related to this point, the governance system of the alliances is characterised by complex – and sometimes asymmetric – power relations that include a heterogeneous group of actors (including private actors, municipalities, and civil society organisations). Although it is too early to assess how the internal configurations of the alliances will be shaped, there could be some tensions emerging between the supranational and (trans)national levels of the alliances’ members. Not only are a greater number of the participating universities located in Western Europe, but Germany and France have also emerged as ‘winner’ institutions, as they have participated in 14 out of the 17 alliances chosen in the first round (Gunn 2020). Put differently, the governance architecture of these alliances leaves room for autonomy in their governance, with the potential to enhance (trans)national integration at the expense of the supranational one.

The heterogeneity in the composition of the alliances is also reflected by the diversity in terms of projects, network-building experiences, and the multiple actors in the initiatives (including students, citizens, and local companies). For instance, the EC2U alliance involves 30 associated partners, including seven municipalities, seven technological centres, student associations, and accreditation bodies (EC2U 2021). Some of the alliances display a greater amount of variation in their educational and knowledge creation approaches. The CHARM-EU alliance offers multilingual courses and language-learning support for students (CHARM-EU 2021); meanwhile, the ECIU alliance provides alternative educational formats, micro-courses, microcredits, and a ‘competence passport’ (ECIU 2021), while the YUFE Alliance partners with several types of businesses and civil society organisations, including Kiron (an NGO providing online learning for refugees), the Adecco staffing agency, and the European Association of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (YUFE Alliance 2021). As shown in a recent report by the European University Association, each alliance has established a governing body in charge of implementing its own agenda. These governing bodies are multifaceted regarding their composition and partnership configurations, ranging from Senate members to external advisors providing quality assurance, which might also lead to a need to address the regulatory complexities at the national level, as well as calling into question the different speeds and the institutional complexities of their decision-making processes (Estermann, Bennetot Pruvot, and Stoyanova 2021).

Taking stock of the role of the Commission in the governance architecture of the alliances, the EUI can be interpreted alongside three dimensions. Firstly, it is a pragmatic strategy because it is aimed at resolving the shortcomings of the Bologna Process by strengthening the organisational capacity at the supranational level in a policy field that cannot be implemented via the traditional community method. This is done through the involvement of stakeholders in an integrated, transnational dialogue and policy exchange, which seems to be beneficial to the members in coping with the current context of the pandemic crisis as well. For example, a recent Commission survey report has highlighted how universities have been able to cope with the challenges of COVID-19 thanks to their participation in the alliances. The survey revealed how more than 60% of the respondents provided a positive opinion on being part of a European university in order to address the challenges of COVID-19, with 80% stating that they shared examples with their alliance to alleviate the impact of COVID-19, reporting examples such as ‘brainstorming on common problems’, the ‘identification of common solutions to online courses’, or ‘jointly addressing the issue of virtual mobility on an institutional and European level’ (European Commission, 2020c). This suggests that the EUI is also helping higher education institutions to coordinate in a faster and more effective way through the exchange of best practices and information.

Secondly, it is also an economic strategy in respect of its emphasis on mobility – as one of the core freedoms of the single market – and on investment in industry, technology and innovation in order to address a more complex and more competitive knowledge-based economy. Issues such as the relevance of the alliances for the European labour market, the involvement of public and private employers in the provision of micro-credentials/learning outcomes following a short learning experience (European Commission 2020b), and the planned implementation of compatible and legally binding European degrees/joint curricula are all strategies that are explicitly anchored to the goals of the single market in facilitating cross-border service provision. Finally, the EUI is also a political strategy that implies a Europeanisation not only of policies but also of policy processes and beliefs supposed to act as catalysts in advancing market integration, as it is visible in the Commission’s ideational discourse that makes an appeal to the role of alliances as relevant to the social and cultural development of the EU in fostering common values and identity. Overall, these three dimensions seem to address what have thus far been the biggest obstacles to the pathway of the EHEA and the ERA, while simultaneously enhancing synergies and cooperation between the two (EHEA 2020; Council of the European Union 2021, 43).

Conclusion: the European Universities Initiative and the future trajectory of European higher education

This paper has examined the pathway of single market integration in the policy field of higher education, i.e. a sensitive policy area closely tied to domestic preferences in which the member states have always been reluctant towards supranationalisation efforts. This final and conclusive section discusses to what extent the theoretical expectations developed in the introduction to this special issue – renewed integration, resilience, and renationalisation (Spendzharova and Raudla, this issue) – can account for how hybrid governance arrangements in European higher education have affected market integration.

Following a discussion of the shortcomings of the Bologna Process, the paper has explored the recent establishment of the EUI, a multi-tiered system of transnational alliances of European higher education institutions. The exploratory analysis illustrated how the EUI can be configured as an equilibrium of power in which multiple principals, albeit with divergent preferences, cooperate towards the common aim of driving innovation and excellence across Europe, thus contributing to an outcome of renewed integration. Though the EUI is still in its implementation stage, the analysis of its input policy side seems to provide preliminary evidence in support of the first hypothesis of this special issue by demonstrating the emergence of the Commission as an institutionalised coordination body in the governance architecture of the alliances. Not only was it rapid in picking up and elaborating on Macron’s idea and the European Council’s recommendation, it has also applied an existing, well-established approach – the Open Method of Coordination – combining the ‘repertoire’ of a European solution to common problems – such as the lack of competitiveness, the lack of mobility, and the need to reinforce common ‘European’ values in higher education – with the provision of financial instruments, templates, and capacity-building partnerships’ actions with the members of the alliances. Specifically, the EUI exhibits the three features of the ‘governance architectures’ framework outlined by Borrás and Radaelli (2011): (i) a long-term problem definition that considers the EUI to be a ‘flagship example for modern and inclusive higher education institutions of the future in Europe’ (Council of the European Union 2021) to solve ‘common European problems’ such as the lack of competitiveness and of shared common values; (ii) goals and output-oriented targets, as, for instance, manifested in the 50% target of mobile students or in the establishment of joint degrees and micro-credentials; and (iii) combinations of new and old organisational arrangements at different levels, which are visible in the EUI’s incorporation of the governance structures of the EHEA and the ERA but enhanced this time through the combination of a bottom-up and top-down governance model characterised by supranational coordination and incentivising structures for the members of the alliances.

Furthermore, the explicit anchoring of the EUI to the issue of improving mobility and providing joint degrees by establishing long-term links with universities institutions represents a path departure from the existing EHEA and ERA approaches. In all of these respects, the EUI can also be seen through the lens of policy learning (Radaelli 2008), with the Commission changing its approach to higher education by acting as a policy developer for the actors of the alliances, with funding becoming one of the key mechanisms for enhancing joint cooperation. Within this configuration, the EU Commission’s ideational, organisational and financial ‘power of the purse’ (Batory and Lindstrom 2011) seems to be well positioned to provide the EUI with legitimacy and relevance in a trans-European dimension, solving the coordination problems previously experienced during the implementation of the Bologna Process.

One additional aspect worthy of further future research is that of focusing on the role of private actors in the policy development of the alliances. What has emerged thus far from the empirical analysis of the EUI is the existence of strong private–public collaborations, suggesting evidence of a multilevel ‘network approach’ that is relevant for the second hypothesis advanced in this special issue. At the same time, the alliances also increase the legitimacy of the private sector to intervene in a policy field that has traditionally been the domain of public governance (Loughlin and Peters 1997). Although it is too early at present to assess the role of stakeholders and the private sector in the policy development of the alliances, it is important to underline their dual role as recipients and agents of policy change, in a dynamic (rather than a static) public–private coordination modality. On the one hand, they are recipients in the sense of the Commission providing capacity building, joint cooperation, and incentives; on the other hand, they are agents as well, taking ownership of the alliances and setting and pursuing their policy agendas according to their (trans) – national institutional context.

Furthermore, comparing a recent initiative such as the EUI with the well-established and extensively analysed Bologna Process has its own limitations. Besides the role that the COVID-19 pandemic might have played in the development of these alliances, it is important to acknowledge that the empirical discussion on the EUI is based on official reports and mission statements that might rhetorically enhance its impact.¹ Though the EUI has been considered the ‘start of an ambitious new phase in intra-European higher education collaboration’ (Gunn 2020, 412), more research is needed in order to identify whether the integration of transnational and national actors will be the appropriate direction of market integration for higher education policy, with the EUI unfolding along the lines of supranational cooperation or, instead, moving towards a trajectory of national or transnational competition.

In addition, there might be the risk that the EUI could lead to a two-speed mode of integration modifying the dynamics of the alliances: some countries might actively endorse it, while others might resist and view it as a threat to their national sovereignty. What is more, it might also be that the EUI could advance less towards ‘Europe’ and more towards nation states as primary (and sole) actors in higher education, which would then cause us to observe renationalisation. Rather than being part of the common European (higher) Education Area, the EUI alliances, based on different institutional and technical components, would still adhere to shared norms and principles but under different configurations of policy agendas and the polarisation of (trans)national actors. This scenario would represent a considerable deviation from the current renewed integration one explored in this paper, potentially altering its aim and policy aspiration to deepen European higher education further.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the constructive comments provided by the participants of the virtual research workshop of the Jean Monnet Network VISTA held in May 2021 as well as panel participants meetings of the 10^th conference of the ECPR Standing Group on the European Union held in June 2021. Special thanks to Aneta Spendzharova and Ringa Raudla for their fruitful and attentive comments on earlier versions of the draft. I also wish to thank the editors of the JEI, and two anonymous referees who kindly reviewed the earlier version of this manuscript and provided extremely helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ERASMUS+ Jean Monnet Network VISTA, Project number 612044-EPP-1-2019-1-NL-EPPJMO-NETWORK, Grant Decision Nr 2019-1609/001–001.

Notes on contributors

Marina Cino Pagliarello

Marina Cino Pagliarello is Lecturer in Political Economy at the Department of Government, University of Essex & Associate Lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University College London (UCL). Her research focuses on European governance, education policy, and on the role of political and economic actors in framing public policies. She has recently published her research in West European Politics, Comparative Education and in the Journal of Contemporary European Research.

Notes

1. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for pointing out this distinction.