Is Eroding National Control over

Education Planning and Policy On every continent, educational systems are considered the exclusive responsibil-ity of individual states. Particularly in Europe, developing educational systems was viewed as an important part of nation building1 until World War II. After the war, however, there was a concerted effort to harmonize educational policies to protect the continent from nationalist excesses that had originally led to war. The purpose of this article is to trace the evolution of national systems and modes of intervention by supernational and international organizations in order understand the institutional convergence across Europe of different policy frameworks for education. Our primary argument is that as different states consent to European-level educational frameworks—a phenomenon referred to as “relinquishment”2— their actions will be interpreted as the expression of their acceptance of the de facto integration of differing national educational policies. The “European area ” of education and life-long learning established by the Bologna and Copenhagen processes has important implications for policy making for the countries of the European Union [EU]. On the one hand, it marks a vital step toward the realization of integration of education in Europe. Getting to this step has necessitated numerous interventions within individual national educa-tional systems. It could not have been achieved without the vision of the architect