The Bologna Process and the Lisbon Research Agenda: the European Commission’s expanding role in higher education discourse

This article examines the role of the European Union’s Commission in weaving together the Bologna Process and the Lisbon research strategy with its existing educational initiatives to define and disseminate an influential vision of European higher education. The article begins by outlining the Commission’s activities in relation to EU education programmes, the Lisbon research agenda and the Bologna Process. It goes on to examine, in a variety of policy texts, the discourse of European higher education that is supported by, and supporting, these large‐scale policy developments. Whilst the overall coherence and cohesiveness of this emerging discourse can be queried, the article argues that the Commission is drawing effectively on both Bologna and Lisbon to firmly constitute — and reconstitute — higher education as a European policy domain. The article concludes with an analysis of how different educational stakeholders are supported and restricted by the Commission’s views of higher education, as articulated through its ‘hybrid’ Bologna/Lisbon agenda.