Main

Mari Elken

Abstract

Traditionally constrained by the Treaty to subsidiary action, a number of innovative approaches for joint European coordination in the area of education have emerged in recent years. This article analyses a particular new European Union (EU) instrument for education – the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) – by examining the vertical, horizontal, and internal tensions within the instrument. Analysis of the vertical dimension identifies widening EU capacity for joint coordination through an informal widening of the subsidiarity principle and opportunities for diffusing EU preferences. Analysis of the horizontal coordination processes suggest that there is still some fragmentation in terms of coordinating the EQF across relevant sectors, even if emerging coordination can be identified in some areas. The internal tensions are related to the nature of the instrument that covers all levels and types of education. It is argued that these internal tensions remain, but the EQF has facilitated the development of a new arena for discussing policy coordination (EQFAG) that can, in the long run, reduce these tensions. While the impact of the EQF has been uneven and its implementation proceeded with various speed at this point, it nevertheless is a successful case of a particular Commission policy preference that has been gaining widespread acceptance across Europe in an area where coordination previously had been met with resistance.

Details

Article Keywords

Education, Qualification frameworks, Coordination

Section
Research Articles
Article Copyright
Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Material published in the JCER is done so under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence, with copyright remaining with the author.
  • Articles published online in the JCER cannot be published in another journal without explicit approval of the JCER editor.
  • Authors can 'self-archive' their articles in digital form on their personal homepages, funder repositories or their institutions' archives provided that they link back to the original source on the JCER website. Authors can archive pre-print, post-print or the publisher's version of their work.
  • Authors agree that submitted articles to the JCER will be submitted to various abstracting, indexing and archiving services as selected by the JCER.
Further information about archiving and copyright are contained within the JCER Open Access Policy.