Corbett 2005 Part 3 Pages 106 165

106 Universities and the Europe of Knowledge
Jones and his close colleagues chose to interpret the Audland conclu-
Copyright © 2005. Palgrave Macmillan. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted
sions optimistically. The working party had upheld the idea that there
was scope for activity on higher education and education not exclu-
sively linked to the common market – i.e. through Community-backed
cooperation.49 But the report had also made it clear to those who
wanted the Community that the criteria for Community action were
likely to be restricted in non-Treaty areas. It was a situation which
invited reflection of alternatives.
Evolving a new strategy
The ‘Grey Areas’ crisis had lasting institutional consequences for

Community activity in education and training. As Jones read the situa-
tion, the Danes ‘and the British sheltering behind them’ were never
prepared to trust in the Commission. ‘There was never any question of
harmonisation. That had been made clear in 1974. The trouble was
Britain and Denmark did not believe us.’50 This is a view which to this
day infuriates British officials who worked in this area. As one former
official put it:
Those involved in 1974 or even 1978 may not have had plans for
harmonisation. But the point about Community competence is that
once granted it becomes part of the acquis and can never be rolled
back … One doesn’t know what future generations might do with
something which seemed innocent enough at the time. Jones was
asking for a leap of faith. If the British couldn’t make the leap it
does not amount to bad faith.51
In November 1979 the situation remained deadlocked. Ministers had

once again refused to meet. MEPs however kept the issue alive by
adopting a resolution regretting the difficulties caused to the Com-
under U.S. or applicable copyright law.
munity’s educational activities by the cancellation of the ministerial

meeting.52 But in this atmosphere a breakthrough was difficult to
achieve. Even Domenico Lenarduzzi, the senior official who had
heralded the Action Programme resolution as ‘the most beautiful docu-
ment in the history of the European Communities because it demon-
strated that the Community was not simply a ‘merchant’ body’,53 was
hard pressed to maintain his optimism.
The first signs of a breakthrough came in 1980, brokered by the edu-
cation committee, under the Italian presidency.54 The Italians had
been consistently supportive of an EC dimension to education policy.
Implementing the Action Programme in Education, 1976–84 107
Only four years previously, the Italian presidency of the education

committee had negotiated the final agreement for the action pro-
gramme.55 Now it was the Italian MEP, Mario Pedini, who was chair-
man of the parliamentary education and culture committee, and his
colleague, Giatto de Biasi who jointly took the procedural initiative
to ensure that the European parliament used its new powers in rela-
tion to the budget to make second reading appropriation on non-
compulsory policies.56 They worked with Jones to develop the idea
that ministers could meet without taking any decisions, to open
the way to agreeing new policy initiatives and to enable the EP to
resume budgetary support. They also suggested that the Education
Committee should report on what it had been doing to monitor
progress on existing initiatives since the collapse of the Council
process. This work was substantial and included a re-examination, on
19 March 1979, of the three Commission communications to which
the Danes had objected in November 1978.57
The Italian proposal was successful to the extent that, in June 1980,
ministers met to consider the Education Committee’s general report.58
This report – a 25-page document – indicated that higher education
had emerged as the educational policy sector on which action
was most developed. The cooperation section recorded that 212 insti-
tutions had been involved in 121 joint study programmes. On the
admission of students from other member states to higher education
institutions be adopted, the report supported the proposals of Cerych
and Smith, to adopt ‘a common approach’. It also advocated the
concept of reciprocal arrangements for the exchange of students
between institutions, as a way round the problems posed by national
selective mechanisms – competitive entry, numerus clausus, etc. The
report also drew attention to an expert report, submitted in June 1978,
which detailed all existing arrangements on the recognition of acade-
mic diplomas, and recommended a Community policy on the issue.59
Council officials were responsive to the ever-determined Jones’

efforts to develop educational activities within the parameters of the
working party report. Jones’ line was to suggest that any meeting of
ministers ought to deliver the authority for the EP to resume financing
educational development. The Council’s legal advisers helpfully sug-
gested that ‘agreement in substance’ had the ‘substance of a decision’.
But this did not carry weight with the national diplomats meeting
within COREPER. The French and Danish representatives rejected this
mediating move on the grounds it was not in ‘bonne et due forme’. They
insisted that further negotiations and any budgetary implications
could only be dealt with within COREPER.60 Consequently, the

Commission’s usually steady allies in the European Parliament, while

supportive of existing activities refused to finance new activities of
the education and training directorate within the 1981 budget. Jones
was disappointed. But MEPs were only playing by the rules.
Jones reacted to such constraints by trying to develop new institu-
tional resources. ‘The one acceptable option was to try and develop a
complementary base for action,’ he later recalled.61 Given the warning
contained in the Commission’s Grey Areas enquiry that officials
should be clear whether they were taking treaty-based action or simply
organising coordination, Jones’ judgement was that he should get the
directorate for education, vocational training and youth policy trans-
ferred from the directorate-general for science, research and education,
which had never had much synergy with other directorates,62 to the
DG for social affairs, where there were likely to be many opportunities
to link education to treaty-based activities.
In terms of jurisdiction, this DG and its Council of Ministers
(employment and social affairs) dealt with the aspects of higher educa-
tion which were treaty-linked: vocational training, freedom of move-
ment, and the issue that had dogged higher education since the 1950s
– the recognition of diplomas, a crucial instrument for mobility. But as
Jones described it, the real difference lay in the individuals operating
the rules. He maintained that the social affairs ministers ‘expected to
deal with Treaty matters. They therefore expected to make decisions.’63
Jones argued that there were procedural precedents to attach educa-
tion to social policy. Thanks to a Council Decision of 22 July 1975,
resources in the social area – European Social Fund grants – could be
used for some educational purposes.64 There had already been
significant education activity, born of the treaty-based Community
process, which the Commission initiated, the Council approved and
the Commission implemented. The proposals and decisions that Jones
regarded as important included many on social policy issues:65
o 1973: Commission proposal for a social action programme, followed

by a Council resolution66
o 1974: Commission proposal for setting up a European centre for
vocational training (CEDEFOP). Established by Council regulation67
and set up in Berlin
o 1975: Commission proposal for a Council directive on the imple-
mentation of the principle of equal treatment for men and women;
Commission guidelines for a framework for EC Committee on
safety; Council decision on the use of European Social Fund grants
o 1976: establishment of Eurydice, the education information net-

work of the EC; the creation of the first programme on transition of

young people from school to working life
o 1977: Council directive on the education of children of migrant
workers, and implementation of Commission pilot schemes
o 1978: Commission proposals for action programme on language
learning and on equality of education and training for girls
o 1979: European Council request for study of concrete measures in
areas linking work and training, followed by Council decision68 and
Council resolution69
Jones maintained that such a move would strengthen Community educa-

tional activity by bringing it closer to mainstream Community concerns –
the argument he had used to the Grey Areas enquiry. He did not believe that
a move to the social affairs directorate-general would change the vision of
education within the EC. As he described the situation, ‘[t]he concept
of Community education policy as a continuum with training was well
established’.70 The higher education activity already agreed and/or imple-
mented was consistent with this view – for example the Commission com-
munication, Education in the Community, the ministers’ resolution of 6 June
1974, the resolution on the action programme on education, 1976, followed
by the first meeting of the Education Committee, and the 1978 proposal for
a common policy on higher education admissions.
From the perspective of the new Commissioner for social affairs, Ivor
Richard – a former junior minister in a Labour government – who took
up the commissioner post in 1981, referring to education as ‘training’
had proved a successful strategy:
Jones’ effective – some would say devious – tactic was to present DG

activities as training. Anything educational had to be done by
stealth. I don’t remember taking anything specifically educational in
my period of office to the Commission. But that did not stop the
DG being effective. The funding of pilot projects and encouraging
educational networks were very important.71
Furthermore, Jones’ efforts appeared to be in line with the concerns

of the university community. As Cerych observed at the time: ‘[T]he
general orientation of higher education towards professional [vocational]
studies … makes it less difficult to introduce into higher education
another training preparing for practical professions.’72 Given the 1970s
expansion in universities and the backdrop of rising unemployment, this
was a reasonable position to hold.
However, speaking from a member state perspective, Banks, the

British official, had a different interpretation of what strengthening

links with the social affairs council would do for a policy area that
member states by now viewed as purely intergovernmental. Banks
warned that if the Commission could not advance, as it wished, with
the ministers of education, it ‘would be likely to stick to an ‘indirect
approach’, using the social affairs council’.73 Banks went on to describe
the social affairs council as providing a ‘cover’ for education-linked pro-
posals under the treaty.74 Such a statement signalled a view among
some member states that Jones was adopting a ‘semi-clandestine’ or
‘devious’ approach – the same phraseology employed by Commissioner
Ivor Richard.75
Events played into Jones’ hands – and those of others wanting closer
treaty links for all Commission activities. The Community calendar
favoured change. The last months of 1980 were marked by the juggling
of people and portfolios for the new Commission. Gaston Thorn of
Luxembourg was to succeed the Briton, Roy Jenkins. Jones’ strategy was
to get approval before Jenkins stepped down, both for the Directorate to
move to DGV Social Affairs and for him to remain Director.
The situation was complicated by the rivalry as to which commis-
sioner would be responsible for education. Was it to be Ivor Richard at
social affairs, or the francophone Belgian diplomat, Etienne (Stevie)
Davignon? Davignon, whose experience went back to the earliest days
of the Community, when he served as chef de cabinet to Spaak, had
been the Commissioner responsible for the internal market, customs
and industrial affairs under the Jenkins presidency. But his ambition
under Thorn, to whom he was going to be a vice-president and an
evident strong man,76 was to drive the key policies of industrial affairs,
energy and research policy – the old Spinelli portfolio. Davignon also
viewed education as a necessary part of that portfolio.77
In the event the portfolio went to Ivor Richard, a Welshman, who
adopted the arguments of his fellow Welshman, Jones, in order to

secure the post – although he later conceded: ‘I had to fight hard to get
education back from Stevie.’78 Richard had followed Jones’ lead in
declaring that co-operation in education would take on a new sign-
ificance if it were more firmly linked more firmly to the overall politi-
cal and economic development of the Community. Hence, went
the argument, it made sense to have education and training under the
Commissioner for social affairs.
A member of Jenkins’ cabinet, Nick Stuart, also remembers the
difficulties. ‘It was quite difficult’ to put the package in place. ‘We
needed to fight off the Italians and the French’.79 Jenkins’ British-
staffed cabinet also favoured the argument which Jones was putting
forward for bringing education closer to training. The fact they all
knew each other helped. ‘We backed Hywel’, says Stuart. There were
other contenders for the job of director backed by France and Italy.
But Jones, as many colleagues recognised, was nothing if not persis-
tent.80 On 4 January 1981, in the last act on the last working day of
the Jenkins Commission, the deal was done. Jenkins gave his agree-
ment to the directorate of education and vocational training and
youth policies moving to the social affairs DG.81 Jones was appointed
to the directorship.
Jones made the shift in emphasis public, stressing the strategic role
education had to play in the Community’s social policies. Thus two
years later, making the keynote speech at a major UK conference, Jones
said that ‘As a direct result of our evident incapacity to cope with the
damaging effects of the economic crisis,’ higher education and educa-
tion had moved ‘from the periphery to a more strategic location in the
spectrum of Community policies.’82
Developing support for higher education
It might have been thought that the Community’s higher education

activities would take a back seat once an education and training direc-
torate had been established in the DG for social affairs. In 1981, the
DG’s most visible efforts were devoted to developing proposals to use
the social fund for measures to create jobs in disadvantaged regions as
part of a Community-wide fight to reduce youth unemployment.83 The
EC budget for education for the period 1976–82 showed the credits for
the whole of the Action Programme lagging behind those for the
programme for the transition to working life until 1982. Other credits
obtained for further education and training – for a centre for infor-
mation on vocational training in Berlin known as CEDEFOP, and the

scheme for the exchange of young workers had a combined total of
almost twice the Action Programme budget.84
Domenico Lenarduzzi, in charge of higher education in the Educa-
tion and Training Directorate, remembers a period of ‘stagnation’ until
1983–84.85 Alan Smith, at work with Ladislav Cerych at the European
Institute of Education in Paris, caught the mood in an article for the
European Journal of Education entitled ‘From Europhoria to pragma-
tism’.86 But higher education was much better resourced than these sta-
tistics would suggest. This was not just a question of budget, though
the EC budget for education and training had grown from 460,000
ECU in 1976 to 11.5 mn ECU in 1982, of which the Action Programme

was getting 3.4 mn ECUs.87 The Community’s higher education activ-
ity generated alliances. The European Institute for Education in Paris
had consistently engaged in development work useful to the Com-
mission. By 1982, the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) which
funded the institute was paying the salaries of a director, a deputy and
several others, maintaining the institute and contributing to various
publishing projects, including the European Journal of Education, an
essential source for those interested in monitoring EC activity in edu-
cation. Cerych, the director of the European Institute, had focussed on
developing the intellectual resources and databases for the develop-
ment of EC education policies, including the first surveys on mobility.
An important part of his work was the initial development on policy
papers needed by Jones in the Commission. The 1978 communication
on a common admission policy was an example of such work.88
The main responsibility of Alan Smith, by all accounts an indefatiga-
ble worker, was to assist Cerych in the development of policy papers,
as well as running the pilot programmes for the joint study projects
and the short study visits. These pilots were crucial in building up
networks. But the policy papers were also an opportunity to extend
contacts. The 1978 common admissions policy draft, for example,
was tried out on university representatives at a conference in Bonn.
Another such occasion came on 3–5 April 1979, when Smith assembled
the 86 directors of joint study programmes at a conference at the
University of Edinburgh, organised by the Commission and chaired by
Jones’ former boss at the University of Sussex, Professor Asa Briggs.89
Smith described the Edinburgh event as ‘a famous occasion. It
institutionalised a network of pioneers.’90 The literature of networks
and other forms of university cooperation also started to build up,91
with Smith himself producing one of the early EC studies in education
‘Joint programmes of study, an instrument of European cooperation in higher

education’.92
At the same time, greater political interest in higher education was
being kindled in larger policy forums, as the grass roots developments
of pilot projects became better known and cultural cooperation became
an issue on the main Community agenda, for the first time since
the mid 1970s. Policy proposals for cultural cooperation within the EC
had originally derived from the Tindemans report of 1975 – Leo
Tindemans, a Belgian, and former Prime Minister, had been charged by
the European Council to make recommendations to advance European
integration. His recommendations included the establishment of a

European Foundation. Raymond Georis of the ECF was tempted

when approached for the job, but decided against it.93 Jones, who was
developing the Action Programme at the time was deeply opposed.
The foundation, despite lengthy and extensive discussions, never mate-
rialised. Tindemans speaking at a 1986 conference was still bitter.94
His only consolation in this regard was to repeat publicly that the EC
activity on education could have been much more ambitious than the
Action Programme of 1976.95
In the 1980s, high level Council initiatives aimed at advancing
integration renewed political interest in cooperation, and gave higher
education a prominent place. First, the German and Italian Foreign
Ministers, Hans Genscher and Emilio Colombo, put forward proposals
for establishing European political cooperation on a legal footing – an
effort that failed to make much progress. However, a German presi-
dency initiative to get heads of government to sign up to a ‘Solemn
Declaration on European Union’, launched in June 1983, had con-
siderable success.96 Even the highly sceptical British Prime Minister,
Margaret Thatcher, went along with the majority, arguing that in any
case the ‘grandiloquent language’ had no legal force and she ‘could not
quarrel about everything’.97
The Stuttgart Declaration had direct implications for higher educa-
tion, especially once the Commission interpreted the declaration as
committing member states to seeking the fullest range of co-operation
between themselves in a wide range of areas not covered by the treaty
establishing the EC. EC leaders agreed that nationally they would
promote closer cooperation between higher education institutions,
including exchanges of teachers and students; intensify exchanges of
experience, particularly among young people; and further develop the
teaching of languages of the member states; improve the level of
knowledge about other member states, including the promotion
of European awareness through history and cultural activities. They

would also develop the activities of the projected European Foundation
and the existing European University Institute.98
In 1984, EC leaders returned to the higher education issue, under the
umbrella of bigger questions facing the Fontainebleau European Council
under the French presidency. The French concern at the time was that
‘Europe had had a breakdown’,99 one symptom of which was an appar-
ent inability to resolve the long-running British budget dispute. On this
issue the French president, François Mitterrand, reached a deal with
Thatcher, enabling the EC to move onto a new strategy. There was thus a
potential for new EC action. The immediate opportunities for higher

education, however, derived from a different symptom of breakdown.

The 1984 French presidency of the EC proposed the establishment of an
ad hoc committee on a People’s Europe to find ways of countering the
lack of public interest for the EC. For Jones and his deputy, Lenarduzzi,
this project represented another opportunity to make the joint study
programme model much more widely known as a response to European
leaders’ general concern for ‘citizens’.
The education ministers also came out in support of action to
promote higher education mobility and, in particular, the joint study
programmes. In 1982, they had agreed on the need to find a solution
to the academic recognition of diplomas and to collect data on stu-
dents studying in other member states, including information about
their ‘social and material conditions’.100 At a meeting on 2 June the
following year, ministers convened as the Council and Ministers for
Education to draw up ‘conclusions’ on how to extend mobility in
higher education, recognising that mobility was ‘one of the most
important objectives of EC educational cooperation’.101
The ministers concluded that they wished to see an extension of
the joint study programmes, recognising that they had ‘proved to be
particularly suitable in overcoming obstacles to mobility in higher edu-
cation’. They also wanted to see more twinning of institutions, and
measures to reduce the financial difficulties faced by students. But they
stuck to the intergovernmental formula: the nearest ministers would
get to action was to undertake a commitment to ‘be guided by the
principle of greatest generosity and flexibility’ on the recognition of
courses and periods of study abroad.
Ministers had thus accepted an argument long put by Jones that
‘the direct inter-institutional co-operation of the type promoted by the
Community’s grant scheme has increasingly proven to be an efficient
instrument for overcoming some of the most intractable problems
related to student mobility within the Community…. In many cases,

such as high tuition fees, restricted admission quotas and difficulties
regarding academic recognition of study abroad, [the difficulties] can
be successfully surmounted through the direct participation of higher
education institutions themselves in addressing the problem.’102
As the Commission recorded events, the EP had pointed to a more
specifically Community approach to higher education. In 1984, having
adopted a resolution ‘on the substance of a preliminary draft Treaty
establishing European Union [it] proposed that the Union shall
have concurrent competence to adopt the following regulations for
(i) Union-wide diplomas … other qualifications … and recognition of

periods of study (ii) the promotion of common or comparable training

programmes through training establishments … and the higher educa-
tion system, through the ministries or universities of the Member States.’
Just as the widening political interest in EC education provided
Jones with an opportunity to make his repositioning of EC education
policy public,103 so too were new opportunities for the EC to develop
higher education coming from sources over which neither Jones nor
the Commission had control. Following the low turnout for the second
set of direct elections for the EP in 1984, for example, heads of state
and government were looking for solutions and thinking again about
the ‘human face’ of the Community, developing a renewed interest in
cultural cooperation.
Technological change was also on the way. As Jones had explained
to the Standing Conference of European Ministers of Education, a
Council of Europe body, at around this time,104
Whereas in the period 1976–82, attention had been strongly focussed

on the links between education and social policy, especially in mea-
sures to combat growing unemployment, in the past two years a new
and growing emphasis had been given to the contribution of educa-
tion and training in the task of modernising the economies and of
exploiting the potential of the new technologies.105
The French director-general of the DG for social affairs, Jean Degimbe,

had already suggested the role of IT in education as an issue worth
working up for the 1984 Fontainebleau Council. In what turned out to
be a decision with important implications for the development of
higher education, the Council did indeed back the idea of further work
on the questions of how to integrate information technology into
higher education, and on the transfer of technology.106
Thus in 1984, thanks to the combination of events and institutional

opportunities outlined here, higher education was the education policy
area most firmly ensconced in EC political opinion. How and why
higher education became the subject of a full Community decision in
the space of the following two years is the subject of the next chapter.
Resolving conflict
The sequence of events recounted here helps solve the puzzle, as to

why – given the dynamic and cooperative approach to educational
cooperation agreed by ministers of education in 1976 and the direc-

tive of 1977 – no use was made of Community instruments during

the late 1970s or early 1980s. The immediate answer is that the
implementation of the Action Programme revealed the essential
fragility of the process. Its innovative deals on policy making and its
packaging of actions raised suspicions among some member state
governments – notably the Danes, the British and the French – that
the Commission was using treaty procedures in domains where these
did not apply.
Such a charge from a member state took the issue away from the
policy specialists and into a political policy venue. With the Danish
intervention, education ceased to be the virtual monopoly of a small
section of the Commission and a policy committee within the Council,
closer to the sector than to the diplomats who made up the permanent
representation of the Council. This charge involved the highest levels
of the Community institutions – the permanent representatives, the
Council secretariat and the highest levels of the Commission, both
within the general secretariat and for the president and the commis-
sioners, and the ministries of foreign affairs. The ruling of the Com-
mission president – guarantor of the treaties – gave the officials at
Jones’ level no choice but to obey their hierarchical superiors. A case
might have been made for a different and more flexible interpretation
as the Commissioners’ own discussions, illustrated. But not under its
British president Roy Jenkins. The outcome might also have been
different for education, if the education and training directorate had
not been shown up by the Audland working party as failing to follow
the correct procedures. Hence the fears of suspicious member state
representatives were fuelled.
However the fact that no decisions were being prepared was not
a sign, as the Commissioner Ivor Richard seemed to suppose, that
nothing was happening. The almost invisible action was significant.
Jones was working to find a less conflict-ridden venue for decision-

making and saw that in the DG social affairs and working for a
maximum of activities that could be backed by the Council of
Ministers for social affairs, as being more Community-minded than
education ministers. But this outcome also has to be explained by
Jones’ conviction that education would be more solidly anchored
within the Community if it could be viewed as at the service of the
Community’s strategic aims. That, too, was easier if the directorate
could develop policy proposals which allowed to the Council of
Ministers for social affairs.
From then on, the contingency of a developing and more ambitious

Community played its part. In 1984 an energetic French presidency

was looking for new ideas. Heads of state and government began to get
concerned about the potential of IT. The French director general of
social affairs responded with a suggestion for a programme which
the following year became the Comett project. The EC leaders’ other
preoccupation in 1984 played to Commission’s readiness to present its
higher education cooperation as a response. The leaders were con-
cerned that the European elections of the previous year had revealed
growing public indifference or hostility to the EC. In this context, the
developing joint study programmes and university cooperation and
student exchange looked to the European Council’s policy advisers as
not just a good example of making Europe ‘closer to the people’, but
an admirable ‘solution’ to their ‘problem’. Hence the idea that
the Community should act on higher education emerged from the
events paradoxically the stronger for the conflict. It was linked to two
Councils or decision-making venues and it had been brought to the
attention of EC leaders – in large part thanks to Jones’ persistence.
8
Attaining a Goal: The Erasmus

Decision, 1985–87
If there was one event that greatly enhanced the chances of cooperation
in higher education becoming enshrined in European Community (EC)
law, it was the installation in January 1985 of a new Commission, under
the presidency of the dynamic French politician, Jacques Delors. But that
event was itself the culmination of many others. This chapter recounts
the process by which broad support for a full EC decision on higher edu-
cation was gained, and how the issue was refined by obstacles and
events, expected and unexpected.
Developing the Commissioner’s programme
An immediately precipitating factor was that breaking with a pattern,

education gained a new and energetic commissioner. This was Peter
Sutherland, a former Irish Attorney-General and future president of the
WTO. Sutherland succeeded Ivor Richard, whose main interest had
been social policy, leaving education – as indeed he had no hesitation
in saying – ‘to Hywel’.1 But Sutherland took the job under rather
special conditions. His prime interest and prime responsibility was as
commissioner for competition. He held the portfolios of social policy

and education ‘in trust’ for one year, pending the accession of Spain
and Portugal.
In some respects Sutherland was similar to Richard in that he also
had no specialist interest in education. But notwithstanding the scep-
ticism of some of the staff of his cabinet,2 he interpreted the European
Economic Community (EEC) treaty – and its jurisprudence – as giving
the Commission had some powers in the field of education.3
Sutherland sent for the key officials, Jean Degimbe, director-general
of DGV, social affairs, and Hywel Ceri Jones, director for education,
118
Attaining a Goal: The Erasmus Decision, 1985–87 119
vocational training and youth policy within the Directorate General

(DG). As Jones remembers, they were called in on a Friday. After a

weekend spent reading the relevant files, ‘on Monday Sutherland
wanted to see us again to discuss his assessment of possible action.4
Given Sutherland’s confidence in a legal base, the key question
was whether the commissioner had the resources necessary to carry
through the action. On reading the dossiers, he concluded that both
the joint study programmes and the university technology-transfer
project could be worked up as draft decisions.5 Both initiatives had
already received favourable comment from the European Council.
Sutherland also liked the symbolic parallel between contemporary
student exchange and ‘the fine medieval European tradition of mobil-
ity of scholars between centres of learning’.6 However, he wanted
evidence that there was sufficient support and experience in the direc-
torate to do the preparatory work and to make the linkage to current
EC strategic aims.
Degimbe, the French director-General of DGV, had been pushing for
policy development to encourage universities to act as ‘knowledge
poles’ for the economy of their regions.7 He had become interested in
the issue a year earlier when the ‘sherpas’ preparing the French Pre-
sidency and the Fontainebleau European Council of June 1984
were trawling for ideas to be put forward for Council approval. At the
time Degimbe had suggested that the education and training direc-
torate should build on work that had resulted in 1983 in a resolution
from the Council (social affairs) on vocational training measures to
meet the challenge of new information technologies.8
In early 1984, André Kirchberger, another Frenchman working in
DGV, had been given the task of exploiting the opportunity, provided
by the French presidency, to write the first draft of a programme on
technology transfer and training.
Degimbe had suggested that we should play to French interests

in education and employment. We could produce a paper on the
theme ‘Technical change? Social change?’ We should focus on
the deficit in qualified manpower.9
Jones was already a powerful advocate on human resource issues,

and in particular for the case that, in order to take advantage of a
skilled technology-based economy, Community commitment to edu-
cation and training was essential. To other officials initially involved,
this marked a new and exciting departure. Kirchberger described the
atmosphere in the office as an ‘intellectual Wild West’, in which

‘adventurers’ could innovate:
Nothing was ruled out, nothing ruled in.10
The title he and Jones came up with the possible programme – Comett
– reflected their sense of the Community moving into new space.11
Jones also saw his contacts with Sutherland as an opportunity to
present the joint study programmes (JSPs) as a successful solution
to the problem of enabling students and staff to move freely between
the Community’s universities. Firstly, they had been tried and tested
for almost ten years, between volunteer academics from more than two
hundred universities. The JSPs had solved all the technical problems
posed by Europe’s diverse traditions in higher education. The fact that
these programmes were based in contracts between academics, backed
by their institutions, to exchange students and to develop elements for
joint courses, was an agreement which overrode the different national
rules. Indeed the scheme was initially engineered as a way round the
problem of different admission systems.12 Secondly, they matched
Sutherland’s and Delors’ skill-building concerns. But the JSPs needed
Community funding, at a time when just one per cent of university
students were studying abroad.13 And above all this academic bridge-
building created goodwill.
There was one other key education player at this stage – Michel
Richonnier, another Frenchman, who had previously worked in the
office of the French national ‘plan’ (Commissariat au Plan) on issues
relating to educational strategy at the national and European level.
Richonnier was the official responsible for education within Sutherland’s
cabinet. By the time Sutherland met Degimbe and Jones, Richonnier
claims he had already been ‘softening up’ the Commissioner.14
It was with some authority that Richonnier pressed Sutherland
to take the lead on a co-operative approach by the Community to the

technological revolution15 and the importance of training young
people to acquire the new ‘technological culture’.16 He also supported
Jones’ contention that a strong Community line on educational
cooperation would provide a common base from which to combat the
crisis of unemployment and the change in the nature of work – and,
furthermore, reduce the drain on social security funding.
But Richonnier, in a tradition that had faded since the Janne and
Tindemans reports were issued in the 1970s, strongly believed that the
Community should back educational co-operation for the political
benefits it would reap.17 Unlike Jones, but like his fellow French citizen
Jacqueline Lastenouse in DGX, Richonnier was an enthusiast for the

cultural role of education. Indeed, in his view education was a necessary

instrument to counter political cynicism about the Community.
There will not be a second generation of Europeans – as opposed to

the heroic first generation – if the youth of today does not acquire a
sense of Europe, the reality and the usefulness of the Community
construction.18
From Sutherland’s vantage point, it was essential to ensure that

the core argument in making a case for education was in tune with the
new Community strategy to complete the single market, taking shape
under Jacques Delors. For Sutherland, everything fitted. He was con-
vinced that the proposals could be ‘dovetailed with the Single Market
focus of the Commission.19
It quickly became clear to Sutherland and his officials that the new
president of the Commission had a highly developed idea of education
and the part it could play in his strategy for advancing European inte-
gration via the single market. Delors, a politician who personally
would have given priority to economic and monetary union as the
energising ‘big idea’ for his mandate, was willing to go along with
the preferred option of the member states for completing the single
market. Having emerged from the Christian socialist tradition, he had
been active for years as an advocate of economic growth as a condition
for strengthening of social cohesion.20
Delors made this conception of the single market explicit, at the
European Parliament (EP) session of 14–15 January 1985, convened to
discuss the thrust of Commission policy. There was a need, said Delors,
to make national economies more flexible to achieve the goal of a
single market. Linking his ideas to Jean Monnet’s concern that Euro-
peans had lost their ability to live together and to combine their cre-
ative strength, Delors also stressed the human dimension of a single

market. He saw the benefits of enlargement to Spain and Portugal. This
meant that the Community would encompass ‘almost every current
of European humanism’.21 There were also benefits of scale and the
‘multiplier effect’ within the Community. The challenge lay in con-
vincing individual Europeans that economic reform was worthwhile.
Hence the declaration that:
I wish to be part of the attempt to rebuild confidence in the impor-

tance of human resources and skills which they contribute. Our
policies on education and training must help everyone to a better
understanding of the way the world is going and enable everyone to

make best use of his talents and resources in the service of society.22
Sutherland did not hesitate a moment longer. His cabinet and the DG
would devise programmes and draft decisions modelled on the joint
study programme and technology transfer programmes, which he
would then present to the Commission. This was a milestone. For
the first time since the 1960s, the Commission could begin work on
drafting full EC decisions in the higher education domain that did
not derive from the ‘law of education’, as did legislation on academic
recognition, derived from Article 57. Furthermore, as all involved
knew, work had to be carried out quickly before Sutherland’s term as
education commissioner ended in December 1985.
The immediate response to Sutherland’s decision from within the
education and training directorate was to give the new programmes a
reality by naming them. Not only was there Comett thought up by
André Kirchberger and Jones,23 Alan Smith, running the technical
agency for the joint study programmes, is widely seen as the individual
who came up with the acronym Erasmus – the European Community
Action Scheme for the Mobility of European Students.24
Sutherland’s decision also brought about an immediate procedural
change in that responsibility for managing the issue shifted from the
specialist bureaucracy of the Commission to the Commissioner’s
cabinet. It was for Michel Richonnier to negotiate on resources and
jurisdiction, and to liaise with Jones and the technical services on the
development of the draft decisions.
Jones recalls the first stage of programme development as one in
which he and Sutherland had regular contact,25 while Sutherland
remembers his own involvement as small in time terms but highly
targeted: ‘I was personally concerned to see that the proposal was
well crafted’.26 Richonnier underlines the sense of a team. He recalls
that his task became ‘to help the dynamic and creative team led by
Hywel Jones to transform a pilot project approach initiated at the end
of the 1970s by Hywel into major programmes such as Comett and
Erasmus…. Jones, Lenarduzzi and Kirchberger27 were supportive …
[making] immense efforts to have the programme proposals approved
by the Commission as early as 1985.’28
In this context, Richonnier’s aim was to achieve a highly ambitious
budget for the programmes. Jones says: ‘Richonnier goes down in
history for daring to think the unthinkable. He kept saying to us
‘Think Big!’29 And he did. Jones’ working budget for Erasmus had pro-
jected a 10–30% increase on the joint study programmes. Alan Smith

did those calculations for the years 1984–88, on the basis of a 1983
grant of 500,000 ecus. A 20% increase would have brought the sum to
1.3 million ecus by 1988. In the event, the Erasmus programme
received 10 million ecus in 1988.30
In fact, Richonnier had started his budget calculations from a different
perspective. Instead of starting with the joint study programmes repre-
senting 1% mobility among existing students, he settled on a mobility
target of 10%.31 He later explained that his thinking was framed by what
he perceived to be the shortcomings of the Action Programme. ‘Too few
individuals were affected. Of the 1,000,000 students in French universi-
ties in 1981, only 10,000 were from the Community.’32 Improving on
that low point thus became his goal.
Facing the unexpected
In February 1985, a ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) –

the so-called Gravier ruling33 – changed the way Sutherland’s cabinet
and Jones viewed the legislative basis of the Erasmus programme. The
ruling has subsequently been the subject of much commentary, with
the general conclusion being that it was the Gravier judgement that
enabled the Erasmus decision to be taken.34 The case had been brought
in 1983 by a student who was a French national wanting to pursue a
course in cartoon design at a Belgian art school. She took the Belgian
authority, the City of Liège, to court, on the grounds that as an EC
national she should have been given a place on the same terms as
Belgian students, and that she should not have been charged the
foreign students’ fee, the minerval.
The ECJ judgement was constructed around two concepts. One was
the principle of non-discrimination between EC nationals in access to
training. This drew on Article 7 of the Regulation 1612/68, which was
itself derived from the rights of workers to freedom of movement, as

embodied in Article 49 of the EEC treaty – i.e. non-discrimination
between Community nationals.35 The second concept underpinning
the ruling was Article 128 of the EEC treaty, which enabled the
Council to lay down general principles for implementing a ‘common
training policy’ in vocational training. A Council decision of 2 April
1963 on the subject had laid down the general principles involved,36
but it had remained a dead letter.37
The Court had thus accepted the argument of the Advocate-General,
Gordon Slynn, that there should be no discrimination between EC
nationals in terms of access to training and that the word ‘training’

should be deemed to cover university education, from which it

followed that:
Any form of education which prepares for a particular profession,

trade or employment, or which provides the necessary training
and skills for such a profession, trade or employment is vocational
training, whatever the age and the level of training of the pupils or
students, or even if the training programme includes an element of
general education.38
From an ECJ perspective, the Gravier judgement was plugging a gap in

the jurisprudence on education, which the Court had begun to develop
with the 1974 Casagrande39 case (case 9/74). According to the 1974
ruling, the functional aims of the common market could not be
obstructed by national legislation in policy areas that had not been
transferred to the Community.40 By extension, the 1983 Forcheri41
ruling made it clear that education and training policies were not, as
such, part of the policy sectors for which Community institutions had
been given competence. In this light the Gravier ruling afforded the
Court the opportunity to define what it meant by ‘lawfully estab-
lished’, a term used in the Forcheri case, and to give substance to the
concept of vocational training.42 Accordingly, the Court argued that
access to vocational training would promote the free movement of
persons throughout the Community, by enabling them to seek
qualifications and complete their training or develop their particular
talents.
From the point of view of Sutherland’s cabinet, the Gravier ruling
was a godsend. As a member of his cabinet recalled, ‘We took the work
on Comett and Erasmus far more seriously after that.’43 This was not
just for the procedural advantage of Article 128 of decision-taking
by simple majority, though that helped. The alternative legislative

procedure in reserve was far more onerous to operate. The Article 235
‘reserve powers’ procedure required unanimity. It states:
If action by the Community should prove necessary to attain, in

the course of the operation of the common market, one of the
objectives of the Community, and the treaty has not provided
the necessary powers, the Council shall, acting unanimously on a
proposal from the Commission, and after consulting the European
Parliament, take the appropriate measures.44
The cabinet needed the judgement to be watertight, and they were reas-
sured to see the Article 128 linkage between university education and
the EEC treaty being made on the highest authority.
Jones subsequently maintained that he had not thought the legal
basis of education was a problem, saying, ‘You could afford to be prag-
matic. Something would turn up’.45 In his view, political support was
the key. In that respect, Article 235 had the advantage in that its use
demonstrated the strength of collective political will attaching to any
action taken under it. Article 128, on the other hand, would secure a
large budget more easily, with Mediterranean states outvoting those
who contributed most to the budget. However, as indicated by Jones’
contributions to Social Europe in 1983 and 1984, his confidence lay
essentially in the fact that the link between education and training
had become a well-established part of the conventional wisdom – a
link further strengthened in relation to the EEC treaty by the new
Community emphasis on skills and technology.
Sarah Evans, legal officer in Jones’ directorate, and close colleague,46
says the issue was also one of the informal rules and procedures which
underpin an ambitious bureaucracy:
In our service, our job is to get decisions. Article 128 made getting a
decision seem relatively easy. It not only provided for treaty competence,
but also established the unusually straightforward procedure of simple
majority voting. This appealed to the Commission, since the smaller
states that were often enthusiastic about education would outnumber the
often reticent larger states such as France, the UK and Germany.47 We saw
the link to Erasmus and Comett would come in the Council Decision
of 2 April 1963, laying down general principles for implementing a
common vocational training policy, based on this Article.48
In fact, by June 1985 there was an opportunity to pursue a double strat-

egy in order to secure a decision. Whilst the directorate and Suther-

land’s cabinet continued to work on the draft programmes on the basis
of Article 128, there were also signs of a more favourable political
climate in the Council working groups, where the idea of building a
recognisable EC strategy on higher education increasingly came to be
perceived as a logical offshoot of efforts to build a European identity.
This shift in political climate followed the Fontainebleau European
Council of 1984, which had left its mark on citizenship issues, and
which promised far more dynamic developments than anything likely
to emerge from the education ministers.
The Fontainebleau communiqué contained a plea that was passion-

ate by diplomatic standards, ‘considering that it was essential that the

Community should respond to the expectations of the people of
Europe by adopting measures to strengthen and promote its identity
and image both for its citizens and for the rest of the world’.49 The EC
called on the Council of Ministers to take a series of specific measures
before the middle of 1985 – the culmination of the Italian presidency.
An ad hoc committee on ‘A People’s Europe’ was established, chaired by
an Italian, Pietro Adonnino.
The Fontainebleau request provided two opportunities for Jones’
directorate to get their ideas straight to the heads of government. First,
the Italian, Domenico Lenarduzzi, head of the directorate’s higher edu-
cation unit, drew on his national network to invite his fellow Italian,
Adonnino, to work with him in drawing up drafts that would form
part of the Commission submission and the eventual report.50 In his
account of events, he pointed to the large table in his office, declaring
‘That is where the report’s passages on education were written!’51
The education and training paragraphs of the Commission’s input to
Adonnino, communicated on 24 September 1984,52 even though built
on ten years of the directorate’s experience, contained new ideas for
European leaders. The heads of government were encouraged to see
that the issue of academic recognition for study abroad was as impor-
tant as the mutual recognition of diplomas – the Article 57 issue that
was itself far from satisfactorily resolved. Over a 13-year-period, the
Council had refused to take a single decision on draft directives for
professional freedom of establishment – when Dahrendorf was strug-
gling to find a solution which would provide freedom of movement
and establishment for doctors, pharmacists and architects.53 As a result,
the Commission now has adopted an alternative tack, proposing that
instead of trying to establish detailed equivalences for study abroad, a
general system for the mutual recognition of university degrees should
be initiated.54
Political leaders were also made aware of the achievements of the
joint study programmes. By 1984, more than 500 universities and
other higher education institutions had devised and carried out such
schemes. The Council had agreed that the Commission could now
award institutional grants to support faculty mobility as well as a
limited number of scholarships in support of student mobility. The
Commission was now working to advance co-operation in education
and higher education by securing Council approval for measures
aimed at stimulating European scientific and technical cooperation
and interchange.55
With the Commission communication on A People’s Europe in the

public domain, the Commission continued to press education minis-

ters on the European dimension to education, and dropped the first
hint that Erasmus and Comett were in the pipeline. They persuaded
the Council to convene two meetings of education ministers, on
3 June 1985 and 13 June 1985, and for the second meeting, repeating
Jones’ idea that employment ministers should be invited too.56
Ministers were told that the Commission expected to be presented
with a proposal on higher education and technological change within
two months, and further proposals on cooperation before the end of
the year.57 But the nearest ministers got to any decision was to agree
conclusions that they should act to make their domestic curricula
‘more European’. They also ‘discussed’ forms of European higher edu-
cation cooperation, but were not willing to put on the record anything
more precise58
Meanwhile, at the political level, the Commission’s celebrated White
Paper, Completing the Internal Market,59 published on 14 June, had made
a clear reference to the Commission’s intention to extend activity in
higher education cooperation, saying the Commission ‘intends to
increase its support for cooperation programmes between further edu-
cation establishments in the different Member States, with a view to
promoting the mobility of students, facilitating the academic recogni-
tion of degrees and diplomas, and helping young people, in whose
hands the future of the Community’s economy lies, to think in
European terms’.60
Other aspects of EC policy relevant to higher education were
being developed in parallel, notably by Etienne Davignon, with a
particular focus on research. Davignon is widely seen as the most
impressive figure in the 1981–84 Commission. Having taken a lead
on many EC issues over the years, this time he was mainly con-
cerned with issues relating to the EC’s industrial performance and
competition, and the question of how to strengthen a Commission-

industry alliance to complete the single market programme. In
1980–81, he had launched the European Round Table, a forum for
discussion and action, bringing together twelve of Europe’s biggest
industrial companies. This successfully opened up a process of
policy discussion which had previously been bogged down among
officials.61
In 1982, Davignon moved a step further in trying to ensure Com-
munity research was more strategically oriented, in the form of the
Esprit programme – the European Strategic Programme for Research
and Development in Information Technologies (ESPRIT) – and viewed
in many quarters as the model for Erasmus, though this did not
emerge in my interviews.62 Davignon would have liked the education

portfolio to link to his main portfolios of research and technology, as
in Dahrendorf’s time,63 – as seen earlier. But he nevertheless moved to
attract university engagement in EC-wide research by establishing
the fist of the ‘framework programmes’. This ran from 1984–87, and set
the pattern of defining priority themes, for which universities in
transnational partnerships could bid for EC-funded projects.64
This significant Community backing for higher education was rein-
forced at the Milan European Council of 28 and 29 June, 1985, which
accepted the People’s Europe report. Adonnino’s committee had effec-
tively matched the forward-looking mood, fuelled by the agreement on
EC enlargement to include Spain and Portugal, the Commission’s
ambitious White Paper proposing to complete the single market by
1992, and the agreement of all Europe’s leaders, except Margaret
Thatcher, at Milan itself to consider European political union as well as
the single market – a context of expectation about the Community’s
advance not seen since the Hague summit of 1969.65
Stating that it was ‘essential to involve and interest young people in
the further development of Europe,’66 the Adonnino committee, in an
energetic turn of phrase, called for a ‘comprehensive’ programme of
European inter-university exchanges and studies, open to a ‘significant’
section of the Community’s student population. The committee also
reached out for the first time to a non-technical audience, proposing a
European academic credit transfer scheme (the future ECTS), establish-
ing bilateral or multilateral higher education partnerships to devise
the credit transfer arrangements for their institutions on the basis of
the ECTS model.67
However the difference between rhetoric and action was evident,
once the Milan summit was over. Right from the start, the previous
January, Sutherland, Degimbe, Jones and Richonnier had anticipated
the Comett programme decision as a test of Article 128, hopefully

leading the way for Erasmus. In September, when the Comett draft
decision and explanatory document were presented to the College of
Commissioners, there was little euphoria at this apparently timely pro-
posal. There had been no follow on from the Adonnino report, which
the education and training directorate had hoped would be a building
block for both Comett and Erasmus. The Comett proposals, although
also apparently in tune with the prevailing Community mood, did not
go through the Commission easily.68
Peter Sutherland recalled the informal negotiations with the Council
which preceded the presentation to the Commissioners as ‘difficult’
because of the budgetary issue – a factor of particular concern to

the Germans who were wary about extra financial commitment at

Community level. Sutherland said:
I had a tough time getting the Comett programme through the

Council largely against German finance ministry opposition. But
I had seen how the Commission could make and win the argument
politically and I knew that a similar powerful case could be made for
Erasmus.69
But Sutherland was able to achieve his goal. Comett was approved by
the College of Commissioners during his ‘trusteeship’ at their meeting
just before Christmas 1985. The draft decision was transmitted to the
Council on 3 January 1986.
The difficulties with the Comett proposal presented a problem for
Erasmus, which was much less directly linked to the treaty or to the
Community’s single market objective. Sutherland, Degimbe, Jones and
Richonnier had anticipated the Comett programme decision as a test
of Article 128, hopefully leading the way for Erasmus. The lessons
Sutherland drew was that it would be essential to demonstrate support
from key players and, given the sensitivity of some member states to
education issues and the potential difficulties presented by budgetary
issues, ‘to make sure that the Erasmus proposal was well crafted’.70
At this stage the sentiments of the Adonnino report, in favour of
integration, and which the education and training directorate had
hoped would be a building block for Comett and Erasmus, had been
forgotten.
Reaching the decision agenda
In the parallel work of preparing the Erasmus draft decision, and its
supporting documentation, the drafting team had for the first time to
spell out the justifications for the decision and the objectives of the
Erasmus programme. This was where good ‘crafting’ showed. Until this
stage of the process, the directorate’s priority had been to get the
action launched, not to justify it in legal detail.
The challenge during the writing of the explanatory document
and the draft decision had been to reflect the multiple reasons that
the events of the year had thrown up for supporting the Erasmus
programme. In an early draft for the explanatory document, Alan
Smith of the technical agency summed up the objectives in terms that
closely reflected the joint study programme’s experience. The Erasmus
programme would meet ‘the need for people to be able to communi-

cate, cooperate and to comprehend each other, for future decision-

makers to regard joint ventures as natural and a positive line of action
rather than a potential source of danger. Mobility was an effective
means of combating emotive campaigns aimed at promoting narrow
national interests to the detriment of the Community as a whole’.71
By the end of the year, the draft decision had been written up, bud-
geting for a 10% take up by students. The communication or explana-
tory memorandum largely reflected the views of A People’s Europe that
there was a cultural case for the programme – that Europe needed ‘the
mentality of co-operation … among young Europeans before they have
completed their studies’. Furthermore, that mobility was a crucial
element in policies aimed at ensuring the economic and social devel-
opment of the Community as a whole’.72 In the draft decision which,
in contrast, had to demonstrate the legal link to the treaty of a
Community-funded activity, the recitals gave pride of place to links to
the treaty via a Council Decision of 1963 on vocational training policy.
The objectives of the programme gave priority to securing an adequate
pool of manpower. This double approach enabled the proposal to go
through the Commission in time to be forwarded to the Council of
Ministers on January 1986.73 The programme was described as
(i) enabling 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
(ii) ensuring 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) strengthening ties between citizens of the various Member
States, with a view to consolidating the concept of a People’s
Europe
Nevertheless the cultural argument remained explicit, reflecting the

way Richonnier had problematised the issue of new generations of
Europeans at the beginning of the year. ‘In an increasingly competitive
world it is vital that persons in positions of responsibility recognise the
crucial need for increased co-operation with partners in other Member
States. Such a mentality of co-operation can and must be encouraged,
in particular among young Europeans before they have completed
their studies.
This is one of the best ways of ensuring that future generations of

decision-makers will regard joint ventures with other EC countries

as a natural and positive line of action rather than a potential source
of risk and danger.
By the same token, it is a particularly effective means of combating

emotive campaigns aimed at promoting narrow national interests
which are to the detriment of the Community as a whole.
For all these reasons a higher level of mobility among the 6mn stu-
dents at 3,600 institutions must be regarded as a crucial element in
policies of ensuring the economic and social development if the
Community as a whole.74
In terms of what the Erasmus proposals wanted from the Com-

munity, it was primarily the resources for grants for the students who
would follow courses in other member states, as well as financial
support for the organisation of intensive short-duration seminars on
specific subjects for students from different member states. The
Commission had envisaged that to stimulate student exchanges, the
Community would set up a network involving 600 universities by
1987, and that this would be expanded to 1,700 institutions by 1989.
As the academic recognition of diplomas and periods of study abroad
was an integral part of the overall strategy to encourage the mobility
of students in the Community, the Erasmus programme would also
need to provide financial support to three schemes: the introduction
of an experimental scheme for the academic recognition of diplomas
and transferable course credits; intensification of the activities of the
current network of twelve national academic recognition information
centres; and the joint development of curricula by different universi-
ties in the Community. Community financial support also needed to
be available for a number of complementary measures (preparatory

visits, contacts between university teachers; introduction of a Com-
munity dimension into the activities of teachers’ and students’ asso-
ciations; annual award of European prize). The proposed budget
allocation for the first phase (1987–1989) was estimated at 175 mn
ecu.75
The Commission proceeded at this stage on the basis that the prin-
ciples of the programme were acceptable to all member states in
the form presented to the Council, but might face difficulties
on the scale envisaged and the legislative instrument.76 Furthermore
ministers of education were decision-averse. As Jones put it: ‘Re-

member, ministers of education had not been willing to make any

type of Community decision – even the non-binding instruments
used in education’77 – since the directive of 1977 on the education of
migrant workers children.78
The informal consultations that got under way while the
Commission was drafting the decision exposed the specific concerns
of various member states. The Commission proposal that the issue
be decided under Article 128 and thereby simple majority voting
was known to be as a disadvantage for the net contributors to the
budget – Germany and the UK – who had previously acted as brakes
on EC activity in education. The net contributors’ reticence might
however be offset by the Mediterranean states’ enthusiasm. They
stood to gain most from forms of exchange which insisted on reci-
procity rather than leaving student movement to the market, which
historically favoured only the British, the French and the Germans.
The Dutch, net contributors, were also in favour of the proposal, as
were the Luxembourgeois.
The Commission decision
The draft decision on Erasmus was presented to the College of

Commissioners on 5 December 1985 as a programme for cooperation
in the field of higher education set up in 1976,79 and aimed at taking
Community action in this field beyond the experimental stage.80 The
commissioners approved its transmission to the Council of Ministers
under the terms of Article 128.
The proposal was forwarded on 3 January 1986 with a recommenda-
tion for a budget of 175 mn ecu for the period 1987–89, to cover the
mobility costs of 10% of students and the establishment of new co-
operative frameworks between universities. Sutherland was thus able to
sign off the Erasmus documents, having achieved his objective as

Commissioner for education. Both the issues selected the previous
January for transformation into potential Community legislation had
reached the Commissioners during his short term of office. Further-
more, it had been easier to get fellow commissioners’ support for
Erasmus than for Comett and the future augured well. ‘The European
rectors were most enthusiastic supporters and a key positive influence
on the ministers of education’.81
From then on, the future of the programmes lay with the
Council of Ministers where, so Jones and his colleagues estimated,
officials were likely to be supportive but member state governments

divided.
The Council takes over
On 3 January 1986, when the draft decision on the Erasmus pro-

gramme was formally received by the general secretariat of the Council
of Ministers, the focus of attention shifted to different actors and
processes. In asking for a Council decision, the Commission was asking
for legislation binding in its entirety upon those to whom it was
addressed (Treaty EC Article 189). In order to secure such legislation,
Article 189c required a proposal from the Commission, an opinion
from the European Parliament and a decision from the Council. Hence
the Council was the ultimate decision-maker.82
Formally, the draft decision’s progress through the Council involved
three stages. First was an initial examination of the text by an expert
Council working party representing the twelve member states,
who cleared particular issues as necessary with national authorities.
Second was an assessment by members of the diplomatic missions, rep-
resented in the committee of permanent representatives, COREPER,
who decided whether a proposal was ready for enactment – acting as a
filter for ministers’ meetings, COREPER working parties clear as much
common ground as possible before ministerial meetings, leaving the
most sensitive matters for ministers to resolve in their discussions.83 In
the third and final stage as approved by the appropriate level national
officials – deputy ambassadors in the case of Erasmus.84
Those concerned with the issue in the various EC institutions – the
Commission, the Council and the EP – expected that the Erasmus
decision would be approved within a year. This was true of, even
the Council, which had not made an educational decision until it
approved the technology-transfer programme, Comett, in July 1986,85
and where was it was predictable that some permanent representatives

would be anxious about breaking away from the inter-governmental
aspect of the ‘mixed’ process. Alan Forrest, head of the education
secretariat at the time, recalls:
We thought that with Erasmus we were dealing with an issue

which would go through the Council processes within a year. The
Dutch presidency in the second half of 1985 had strongly sup-
ported the Commission’s drafting of the proposal. We foresaw dis-
cussion by ministers in Council in June under the Luxembourg
presidency, and the decision taken in November under the UK

presidency. But it took the Belgian presidency of the first half of

1987 to deliver agreement.86
In the spring of 1986, the new Commissioner for education, the

Spaniard, Manuel Marin, proposed some classic ‘softening up’ to help
the process along. He proposed that the forthcoming tenth anniversary
of European educational co-operation – the Action Programme resolu-
tion of 1976 – should be celebrated.87 The obvious idea was an informal
‘ministerial’. An informal ministerial occasion was a tactical bonus for
the Commission. It created a channel to ministers, away from the
bargaining considerations inherent to meetings of national diplomatic
missions to the EC, where diplomats and finance ministry officials dom-
inated. For ministers themselves, the informality of such Community
proceedings provided those rare occasions when they felt Europe came
together. Robert Jackson, a British minister for higher education in the
late 1980s and a former academic, was at an informal ministers’
meeting later, in Segovia and found the experience unforgettable:
It was an extension of the informal lunches we would have during

Council meetings, always the best moment. These informal meet-
ings were wild and wacky. People would talk at the level of ideas
they had in the bath…. The informal ministerial was the same, only
it went on longer and more splendidly. I remember a great feast of
sucking pigs cut up by armies of chefs. Menus were in the most
flowery of languages. On that occasion Paris was described as the
capital of Europe. My companion in the coach on the way back was
the French minister, Lionel Jospin. He was inordinately pleased.88
Jackson was well aware of Jones’ strategy. ‘There was this twinkling
Welshman,’ Jackson recalls, ‘networking away like mad. Very Tafia.89
He was clever. He took the opportunity to embark on some intense

lobbying for his project’.90
National officials, however, were nervous about such occasions. A
British education ministry official who had accompanied several suc-
cessive ministers to the Council, remembers some informal ministerial
meetings:
We thought them downright dangerous. The Commission was

always trying to get ministers to take a position on an issue which
would be coming up on the formal agenda. So we’d have to step in
to say we weren’t working under Council procedure and that no

decisions could be made, no commitments given. We were firm

with the Commission that nothing said at an informal meeting
could be used on the record.91
The informal ministerial meeting took place on 16 May 1986, to

consider the Commission’s projects, Erasmus and Comett, as well as a
youth programme the directorate was developing. Ministers were
reminded that support for Erasmus was gaining ground in Com-
munity institutions. On 23 April, the Education Committee had
praised the design of the envisaged programme and welcomed the
Commission’s evident resolve in trying to overcome the serious
obstacles to mobility.92 Furthermore, the European Parliament had
supported a resolution that welcomed the proposal as a way of bring-
ing about voluntary convergence in higher education and assumed
the proposal would go through rapidly. 93 According to the record,
ministers discussed possible new programmes – Erasmus and the
youth programme – as well as the proposed youth programme, Yes
for Europe, and Comett.94 But they had all been briefed not to take
any decision.
On 9 June 1986, it became clear that, despite the best hopes of Marin
and Jones, the informal meeting had not significantly advanced the
cause of Erasmus. On that day, ministers of education met in a session
which officials at both the Council and in the Commission had pen-
cilled in as the date for indicating support for the draft Erasmus deci-
sion,95 in preparation for formal approval in December 1986. But in
fact ministers meeting ‘within’ the Council, failed to reach agreement
on even the principle of a programme. A harsh instruction to the edu-
cation committee urged it ‘to focus its attention on the possibilities of
extending agreement between universities within a European network,
and on ways to avoid the creation of further cumbersome structures in
this sphere’.96 The best that could be done by the Luxembourg presi-
dency – which favoured Erasmus – was to get the Erasmus draft deci-
sion referred to the next meeting of ministers.
The brakes had been put on the Erasmus programme within
COREPER, at the level of the deputy ambassadors – diplomats whose
background is usually in the ministries of finance or trade. In this diplo-
matic forum for presenting national governments’ views, and negotiat-
ing consensus, education could not expect the specialist attention it
had had in the Council working party. ‘We used to think of education
under its budgetary classification, as part of ‘other matters’,’ recalled
one former deputy ambassador.97 And indeed budgetary questions

and issues of sovereignty appear to have dominated the discussions.

Governments which had approved the rhetoric of, for example,
Adonnino, were deeply divided once faced with a concrete proposi-
tion for a higher education programme.98 Beyond the divide between
the net contributors to the EC budget and the net beneficiaries, there
were also specific national concerns. The UK, traditional destination
for a large number of Greeks, feared an influx of students from the
new Mediterranean member states,99 though some claim such a factor
inclined the UK to favour the concept of organised, and thus con-
trollable, mobility being developed by the Commission.100 For their
part, the Belgians stressed that they did not want their relatively open
medical schools to be inundated with yet more Scandinavian
students. As for resources, several member states thought the Com-
mission’s recommendations looked expensive, and possibly difficult
to contain. In France ministry officials feared any Community
funding for education would lead their ministry of finance to claw
back part of the national grant for the sector. Others feared that a
jump in student mobility from around 1% to 10% not only looked
expensive but unfeasible.101
Before a Council meeting ministers are given a final briefing from
the national diplomatic mission. ‘It was to make sure we did not
deviate’ recalls Jackson. who thought of COREPER as ‘the real chaps’.102
‘They took you in charge. They told you what to think. There was no
question of discussing the issues.’103 As an intellectual, he remembers
with frustration that an issue which was a minor matter for the diplo-
mats could be a major matter for the minister of education. As many
sources concur, the Council meeting procedures were not conducive to
discussion either. Ministers would once more be expected to speak
to national positions.
In the months that followed, as the issue went between the educa-
tion committee, which was looking for solutions, the council working
party, and COREPER, which was defending a variety of national lines,
it was clear that there was no consensus to be found. Ministers, like
Jackson, who thought that ‘Erasmus was like apple pie and mother-
hood. You couldn’t be against it,’ were mistaken.
Jones, getting the feedback that the Council meeting of education
ministers scheduled for 28 November, was not certain to approve the
Erasmus proposal, struck upon an opportunity to rally influential
support. The rectors of universities in existence in Erasmus’ time –
generally not only the oldest but the most prestigious – were meeting
in at the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL)104 on 27 November, at

the initiative of the Leuven rector, Roger Dillemans.105

Educated in philosophy and law at Leuven and Harvard, Dillemans,
like Jackson, was an academic inspired by the idea that the Com-
munity was at last taking education seriously. Dillemans however had
more opportunities than a junior minister. As rector of Leuven univer-
sity, a jewel in the Belgian crown, he had been instrumental in getting
the Dutch EC presidency of 1985 to support the Erasmus idea. He later
said: ‘I saw its value as promoting the mobility of the intelligentsia,
changing a situation in which the mobile were mainly the rich.’106
In his speech to his fellow rectors from 29 of Europe’s leading institu-
tions, Dillemans proclaimed:
University education contains much more than just training for

the practice of a profession…. After 30 years of Europe’s existence,
the public thinks the study of other peoples’ language, culture, reli-
gion, scientific achievements is relevant to every one of us and a
necessary part of university education, of common interest to the
peoples of Europe.
The Erasmus programme could introduce an ever-increasing number

of students to European realities, to strengthen relations between
citizens of Member States of the European Community and, in the
end, to create a true European university network. One of its
strengths would be that it would attract brilliant, but otherwise ordi-
nary students, and researchers of whatever social origin, language,
creed and opinion.107
Dillemans described the 30 rectors at that meeting as initially believing

that they should ‘go carefully, but firmly, on how to improve opportu-
nities for undergraduate and research students under existing national
laws, mindful of the fact that the Community was going beyond its
traditional sphere and that was still an issue within the Council’. Then
Jones arrived.’108 It was the first time Dillemans had met Jones – and he
was greatly impressed.
He made a very great speech. He entirely changed the spirit of

the meeting. His address on the dangers of the Erasmus programme
not being agreed the following day gave urgency to our own idea
that the Community should be supporting mobility which did not
depend on social class, but intelligence. Here in our panelled halls,
we instantly agreed to send a telegram to national ministers of

education.109
Dillemans achieved his wish that rectors give a strong impetus to

Erasmus. The rectors’ telegram urged ministers to recognise that
‘the provision of substantial direct support for students is the key to
the success of the Erasmus programme’. The proposed Erasmus budget
‘would enable some 50,000 of the 6 million students in the 12 EC
countries to become mobile’ – a figure that was still, they emphasised,
‘a small proportion of the total student population.’110 The rectors’
message also informed ministers that:
The Conference has given its unanimous support for the pro-
gramme which it regarded as providing the means for a vital break-
through in achieving an appropriate level of student mobility
within the European Community, as called for by the heads of state
and government. For their part the universities are ready to respond
to the challenge of implementing the programme.111
At the meeting at the Council in 28 November 1986, ministers of edu-

cation had to consider whether they would approve the full
Community procedure of Article 128 as the basis for Erasmus, and the
draft budget drawn up by Richonnier. The rectors’ lobbying had no
impact at this stage. The ministers were not concerned with the issue
but with the procedures. They could not even agree to meet under a
full Council procedure, as required by Article 128. The annual report of
the Council records a meeting under the mixed process devised in the
1970s. ‘At its meeting of 28 November, the Council and Ministers of
Education meeting within the Council engaged in a long and detailed
examination of the programme for a Decision adopting a Community
action scheme for the mobility of university students (ERASMUS).’112
An important issue for the ministers was that approval of the Comett
decision, in July 1986, had, contrary to Jones’ hopes, failed to set a
precedent for a broad ‘Gravier’ interpretation of university education as
vocational training and thus consistent with Article 128. Comett,
much more genuinely vocational than was Erasmus, was finally
approved on the basis of Article 235 alongside Articles 128.113 Ministers
of employment and social affairs, for all their commitment to
Community decision-making, had nonetheless judged aspects of the
proposal to fall outside the treaty.114
At the meeting of 28 November 1986, ministers divided into three
camps on the issues of jurisdiction and resources. The Commission
proposal that the Erasmus programme be approved under Article 128

pleased Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy, as well as Luxembourg.115 For

the Spanish, Portuguese and Greeks, all of whom had suffered under
dictatorships, Erasmus was perceived to provide a means of upgrading
their universities and underpinning their autonomy.116 Furthermore,
under the ‘free market’ movement of citizens, their students went
north while few came south. For the Italians, who had seized every
opportunity to strengthen a European dimension to higher education –
both through the EP committee concerned with education, and
through the European University project – organised student mobility
represented a way forward in terms of university reform. None of these
countries was a net contributor to the EC budget.
The second group – the Germans, Dutch, Irish and Danes – believed
that Erasmus should be approved on legal grounds, on the double basis
of Article 128 and Article 235. Net contributors to the budget, includ-
ing Germany and the Netherlands, were against the sole Article 128
procedure, which meant they could be outvoted by the Mediterranean
countries. A third group, consisting of Belgium, the UK and France,
insisted that Article 235 should be the sole legal foundation for the
decision, relying on the Article’s requirement for unanimity to act as a
brake on budgetary demands to fund the programme.
There were other national concerns. The Belgians, like the British,
feared an uncontrolled influx of students, and held out little hope that
the ECJ would help them.117 France was reticent given its long-stand-
ing position, evident since the 1950s, that co-operation needed to be
seen as a political choice. But the French also had tactical reasons for
rejecting Erasmus, associated with the ‘claw back regime’ operated by
its Ministry of Finance. Ministry officials had persuaded the minister
concerned, Michèle Alliott-Marie that Erasmus was not worth its price.
Furthermore, there were fears that Erasmus was ‘an Anglo-Saxon’
programme.118
The British, meanwhile, who had chaired the meeting as holders

of the presidency in the second half of 1986, had a complicated
domestic agenda which vied with the traditional wish of a presidency
to succeed. Officials within the British department of education appre-
ciated that organised exchanges based on reciprocity, as proposed
under Erasmus, was advantageous because it was predictable.119 The
pro-European minister for higher education, Christopher Patten, was
in favour of Erasmus for wider reasons. But the secretary of state,
Kenneth Baker, was not. Baker, who was close to Margaret Thatcher,
shared her suspicion of EC measures that could be a ‘can opener’
for more expensive EC projects.120 Furthermore, Thatcher had expressly
forbidden ministers to approve any new expenditure. Patten was

therefore ruled out as unsafe, and another junior minister, Angela

Rumbold, was sent to chair the meeting, assisted by the director of
higher education in the education ministry.121
This change in chairmanship contributed to the meeting’s chaotic
outcome on 28 November and when it reconvened on 1 December. Faced
with divisions over the legal basis for Erasmus, the senior British educa-
tion official, Tony Clark, decided to focus his efforts on getting a deal on
resources for the programme, which, if successful, could prepare a deal on
the legal base. When the Council resumed its session on 1 December,
Clark announced to his minister that he had a deal on a major point of
contention: the budget reserved for Erasmus. As against the Commiss-
ion’s proposed budget of 175 mn ecu, the Council proposed 50 mn ecu,
to set up a European university network. The Council would also ‘save’
Community money by excluding grants. This suggestion by the chair
appeared to be a response to the French minister present, Michèle Alliott-
Marie, who explained her opposition to the Erasmus programme by
saying that ‘we cannot let students loose with a grant but no prior
guarantees on recognition for their studies’.122
At that point Commissioner Marin withdrew the proposal on behalf
of the Commission, maintaining that the Ministers’ offer no longer
corresponded to the aim or method proposed. The Commission’s
programme had designated 100 mn ecu of the total 175 mn ecu to be
provided over three years to go towards direct financial grants.
According to Marin, reducing the programme to a university network
without providing grants ‘would be like buying a cookery book to
assuage one’s hunger. How can we promote students’ mobility without
giving them the means to be mobile?’ he asked.
Marin, a former student leader, then left the meeting to address the
press with the memorable words that
In the EC we accord more importance to a cow than to a hundred

students….
As he explained
The budget for Erasmus requested by the Commission amounted to

four days of farm spending. This is why Europeans think we are
mad: we can spend enormous amounts for our agriculture, but we
are incapable of spending anything to educate our young people. If
Erasmus of Rotterdam had been present at the Council he would
have been tearing his hair out.123
Several officials from the education and training directorate thought

Marin’s decision to withdraw an item from the agenda was a high-risk

strategy. ‘We wondered whether Marin had forgotten which political
arena he was in’, remembers Lenarduzzi.124 However the directorate’s
legal officer, Sarah Evans, maintained that such manoeuvres ‘happened
the whole time when the Council introduced new material’.125 The
immediate question for all the policy-makers committed to Erasmus
was how to rescue the draft decision.
The European Council to the rescue
Just four days after the failed meeting of ministers of education, the
London summit was due to be held, presided over by Margaret
Thatcher. It was an occasion Thatcher herself remembered for her
‘housekeeping’, and for the beginnings of her dislike of Jacques Delors.
I took a close interest in the physical as well as the diplomatic

preparations for our big summits…. On this occasion I took care to
have the battleship-grey walls of the Queen Elizabeth II Conference
Centre covered with beige hangings and pictures, deliberately
having some drawings by Henry Moore opposite President
Mitterrand, who I knew loved Moore as much as I did.
Politically Thatcher saw the summit as memorable in three respects.

‘Undoubtedly the main achievement of the British presidency was the
adoption of, or agreement to, a record number of measures to imple-
ment the single market. This was the sort of solid progress the Com-
munity needed, rather than flashy publicity-seeking initiatives which
came to nothing or just caused bad feeling.’126 It was also the meeting
at which she perceived Jacques Delors to be ‘a new kind of European
Commission president, tough, talented, demagogic on occasion – and
a major player’,127 and for her prediction that even the veto, legal safe-
guards and declared exemptions might be overthrown by the emerging
Franco-German bloc.
Yet for those concerned with the Erasmus issue, the European
Council was memorable in a different way. By 5–6 December, the
rectors who had been present at Leuven, and whose universities had
educated many of Europe’s political leaders, had done their work. They
had called on their national leaders to support a scheme aimed at
securing ‘the mobility of the intelligentsia’.128 For example Dillemans
had briefed the Belgian prime minister, Wilf Martens, a fellow Leuven
graduate. He believed that Mitterrand had been briefed by Déréchat of
Poitiers.129 In any event, Mitterrand, according to his closest adviser,

Jacques Attali, had come to the meeting determined that ‘We will have
Erasmus’, and to return with the issue settled.130
A detailed account of the extensive pressure that built up at the
meeting is provided by Garret Fitzgerald, the Irish prime minister who
had been alerted to the Erasmus issue by an Irish Leuven graduate, Paddy
Masterson, President of University College, Dublin. Masterson told
Fitzgerald that Erasmus might fail because education ministers of the
bigger EC countries were reluctant to approve spending at the level
recommended by the Commission.131 As Fitzgerald recounts the story:132
Paddy Masterson … asked me if there was anything I could do about

it; I said that I would see if I could raise the matter without notice at
the European Council.
I decided the best way to approach the issue was informally; accord-
ingly during a break in the discussions I spoke to [the French prime
minister] Jacques Chirac. He responded enthusiastically, clearly con-
cerned that his minister for education should have taken a negative
view of the proposal, and he suggested that we jointly approach
Hans-Dietrich Genscher, because the German minister for education
was another of those opposed to it. We went across the room to
speak to Genscher and secured his immediate support.
I told my officials at once about this, and the project was then suc-
cessfully pursued at other levels, with the result that the Erasmus
programme, the survival of which had seemed threatened, got off
the ground quite soon thereafter.133
Such are the agendas of statesmen that Chirac, the French prime min-
ister, had to fly back to Paris early on the Sunday, to a crisis: a young
man had died during student demonstrations after being beaten up by

riot police. Meanwhile Mitterrand, the French president, was able
to breakfast with the German leader, Helmut Kohl, to discuss French
monetary problems, as well as the situation in the Soviet Union,
Libya and Iran. He had dinner with Felipe Gonzales of Spain.
According to Jacques Attali, the special adviser who spent the weekend
at Mitterrand’s side – and who was also keeping a diary for later publi-
cation – the two leaders discussed ‘delicate dossiers’ like agriculture,
and the prospect of concerted action against terrorism. But the
weekend was also notable for settling the Erasmus issue. As Attali
noted, the communiqué stated that ‘The European Council desired the
rapid adoption of Erasmus’.134 Erasmus was back on the decision

agenda, despite the conflicts of the previous week.

The solution for a quick settlement on Erasmus was to put the issue
on the agenda of the General Affairs Council of 15–16 December, i.e.
the Council of ministers of foreign affairs. Two key procedural issues
remained to be addressed. The first was to get the Commission to re-
present the proposal that had been withdrawn at the 28 November/
1 December session of the Council of Ministers (education). The
second was to give the incoming Belgian presidency the opportunity
to make a commitment that it would settle the issue before the next
meeting of Council of Ministers (education) scheduled for June 1987.
The embattled tone, however, remained in press at the time:
The General Council took note of the letter by Mr Marin, Com-

missioner, to Sir Geoffrey Howe, Council president, in its Tuesday
session. The letter states that the Commission is pleased with the
political commitment shown by the European Council in London
which asked that ‘the Erasmus programme on mobility of students
be studied again so that the Council can reach a decision at its next
session.
The Commission presented its original proposal again because it

feels that now the conditions are present for the Council to make a
decision respecting the core of the proposal – grants to allow greater
mobility for students in the Community – as well as respecting the
quantitative and financial scope of the programme.
After Mr Marin’s remarks, President Howe said that he took note of

them and added that the Council will reflect on the European
Council’s view and will decide on the Erasmus programme at its
next session. As a result, the file was sent to COREPER.135
The pressure on the Council to sort out the problem mounted significantly
within days. At the customary EP session that follows Council meetings,
and at which EC presidents and the President of the Commission give their
assessment, Delors himself raised the issue of Erasmus. The Commission
had been ‘very disappointed’ by the London discussion on the co-operative
strategy for growth, the research programme and Erasmus – ‘this little
student exchange programme’. An Irish MP, who probably knew of
Fitzgerald’s intervention at the European Council, echoed Delors.136 On
11 December 1986, a compromise amendment moved by four groups of
including the two largest, the Socialists and the EPP (Conservative) asked
the Council to adopt the entire Erasmus programme with the credits
planned, and that it be implemented quickly. The Parliament welcomed

the Commission’s statement that it was ready to present the programme to
the General Council on 15 and 16 December. It ‘deplored’ the education
Council’s failure on 28 November to approve the project, especially since
the Council representing finance ministers had written the necessary credits
into the 1987 budget, just three days previously.137 Margaret Thatcher was
enraged, blaming Delors for the Parliamentary amendment138 – it was the
beginning of their mutual hostility.
As for Erasmus, Mitterrand followed up the issue, addressing an audi-
ence of students on the theme of Europe as the way forward, and com-
mitting to the programme. It was a speech that members of the
Commission’s education directorate and officials in the Council secre-
tariat in post at the time judged to be very important.139 The French
Minister of Education, René Monory, resolved the particular French
problem over Erasmus by working out the financial deal between the
education and finance ministries, ‘an act which turned the balance in
France’.140 But even then, when Erasmus should have been close to
agreement, the French produced another suggestion. In April the
French government celebrated the 30th anniversary of the signing of
the Treaty of Rome by issuing a Blue Book (Un Livre Bleu). This state-
ment on Community cultural policy as a matter for political co-
operation rather than Community regulation appeared at least implic-
itly to include education.141 The Commission and the Belgian
Presidency, trying to keep Erasmus within Community processes,
rejected this ‘piece of intergovernmentalism’.142 However the Belgian
presidency, with the aid of the Education Committee, delivered agree-
ment on Erasmus. On 14 May 1987, the date of the subsequent
Council meeting of ministers of education, it was clear that there was a
deal. The Belgian presidency announced that all delegations had
agreed that Erasmus could go ahead on the double basis of Article 128
and Article 235. A final recital added to the draft decision achieved the
compromise on jurisdiction – and on the same basis as Comett. The
final recital reads:
Whereas this action programme includes aspects relating to educa-

tion which, at the present stage of the development of Community
law, may be regarded as falling outside the scope of the common
vocational training policy as provided by Article 128 of the Treaty;
whereas these aspects of the programme can, together with the
vocational training objectives to which they are closely linked, con-
tribute to the harmonious development of economic activities
throughout the Community; whereas to the extent the Treaty has

not provided the necessary powers, and action for this purpose
appears necessary to attain, in the course of the operation of the
common market, one of the objectives of the Community.
One of the officials in the working party, devising the deal, remembers
Domenico Lenarduzzi, Jones’ deputy in the directorate for education
and training, being ‘furious’ at the suggestion that Article 235 had to
be added.143 But it was that suggestion that got approval from the
member states. The fact that another part of the Commission – its legal
services – were threatening to take the Council to the European Court
for misusing Community processes in seeking the double legislative
base – was ignored for the moment. What ministers wanted was a
political deal. Process could be dealt with later.144
At the Council of Ministers meeting (Education) of 14 May 1987, the
double legal base was agreed, despite the fact that the Commission
would probably appeal. So was the proposal for a budget of 85 mn ecus
over three years – reduced from 175 mn ecus – but with provision
for the EP to review the programme budget after two years. The
funding would be released in blocks – 10 mn ecus for the first year,
30 mn ecus for the second and 45 mn ecus for the third. By the third
year, the proportion of funding reserved for scholarships would be
double that reserved for building a network of universities and the
broader recognition of diplomas.
The Italians were disappointed that the budget was not larger. But it
was estimated that 29,000 students from the Community would
benefit from Erasmus scholarships during the first three years, and
that there would be about 3,000 grants to universities to allow them to
organise exchange programmes for students and teachers. Commiss-
ioner Marin recorded his satisfaction on all aspects but one procedural
issue.145 And it was all much more than Jones, Lenarduzzi or Smith had
dreamed of at the drafting stage.146

On 15 June 1987, the formal agreement to the Erasmus programme
was given by the Council of Ministers, on the double basis of Articles
128 and 235, and approving that it should come into effect immedi-
ately.147 For the first time full Community authority was being exer-
cised for higher education cooperation, with the agreement of Member
States. The Decision records that they needed:
(i) to achieve a significant increase in the number of students from

universities … spending an integrated period of study in another
Member State in order that the Community may draw upon an
adequate pool of manpower with first hand experience of

economic and social aspects of other Member States

(ii) to promote broad and intensive cooperation between universities
in all Member States
(iii) to harness the full intellectual potential of the universities in the
Community by means of increased mobility of the teaching staff,
thereby improving the quality of the education and training pro-
vided by the universities with a view to securing the competitive-
ness of the Community in the world market
(iv) to strengthen the interaction between citizens in different
Member States with a view to consolidating the concept of a
People’s Europe to ensure the development of a pool of graduates
with direct experience of intra-Community cooperation, thereby
creating the basis upon which intensified cooperation in the
economic and social sectors can develop at Community level
History had been made. With the decision of Erasmus, the idea of
Community-sponsored higher education cooperation had completed a
trajectory that could be traced back to the original, unexpected pro-
posal at the Messina meeting of 1955 signalling that the new Europe
needed close links with universities – both as an indication that this
Europe wished to be defined at least partly in terms of ‘learning’, ‘intel-
ligence’ or the ‘intelligentsia’, and to draw on the intellectual firepower
of European universities to support Community policies.
However, by the time of the events covered in this chapter, ideas for
the Europe of Intelligence had been significantly restricted. The issue
had become a question of a programme only – and ‘a little programme’
at that, in the words of Delors – for organised exchange and coopera-
tion between Community universities. Moreover, there was a wide gap
between what the Commission had proposed and what the Council
had accepted. The Commission had proposed that the programme
should aim at 10% of Community students, and should cover such

cooperation activities as joint curriculum development, for which it
had budgeted 175 mn ecus. The Council, one the other hand, refused
to set a target for the number of students, insisting only that most of
the funds went towards top-up funding for student exchange and
mobility, and reducing the total sum by over 50%.
Explaining the decision
This account shows that it is simply not plausible to think the EC deci-
sion to create the Erasmus programme was made because of a single
cause – be it the Single European Act, the Gravier ruling of the ECJ or
the chaotic way in which a deal was stitched up between the European
Council and the Council of Ministers, and the Council and the
Commission, and certain member states to approve the programme.
The Council Decision creating the Erasmus programme completed a
policy cycle that had begun in the late 1960s, with the problem of not
just what the Community might do in the higher education policy
domain, but also how it should do it, and the cycle was influenced by
what had gone before. If member state governments were all, more or
less, attracted to the idea that the Community should have a university
dimension – and ideas for the Europe of Intelligence resurfaced regu-
larly over these years – there was a real problem about how such an
idea could be translated into policy in ways which respected university
autonomy and national sovereignty, and yet was more dynamic than
anything hitherto achieved under pure intergovernmental processes.
Over the thirty years a number of different combinations were tried.
In general this account confirms a causal link between an agreed
definition of the issue and the existence of a viable policy ‘solution’
before a decision is made. Getting agreement to the issue can be a long
process. As we have seen there was no progress as long as the issue was
seen as the creation of a European University. Once the issue was
reframed as using Europe for reinforcing cooperation, the higher edu-
cation policy-making took off. With the 1970s and 1980s development
of university networks and joint study programmes, the Commission
was able to demonstrate that it had a solution when the issue which
interested ministers became one of student mobility. The higher educa-
tion ‘solution’, moreover, had a wide appeal. It showed how much
could be achieved by using non-binding law and political will, backed
by some structured cooperation. And this was long before this became
a generalised EC approach in areas of social policy.
However issues and solutions have to be brought together and
consensus achieved if there is to be a decision. But while the efforts

of policy entrepreneurs had contributed to both issue definition and
solution over many years, the decision – in contrast – may be taken,
and was in this case, by office holders able to pay only limited atten-
tion to the issue. In ways which were characteristic of modern theo-
ries of limited rationality and rule following, the ministers of
education involved lived with the constraints of the demands on
their time, the particularity of the rules under which they operated
and the changing combinations of participants – and brought to
bear their identities, their judgements about consequences and
appropriateness.148
In such circumstances decision-making becomes damage limitation.

The aspects of the Erasmus decision which attracted ministers’ atten-

tion were those of financial resources and legal backing. The idea of
Europe of the Intelligence took second place.
In the immediate situation it took the leadership of the epistemic
community leadership of the rectors – and the un-diplomatic outburst
of a Commissioner able to reach the press – to reassert the idea of
why Erasmus was important. But from then on Erasmus could prove
itself in practice – and, in the way that the decisions do, it immediately
opened the door to new developments. One policy cycle had ended,
but another had already begun.149
Part III
the Idea Recurs

The Europe of Knowledge – Why
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9
Policy Entrepreneurship in EU
Higher Education: Process, Actions,
Identities
Introduction
The idea of the Europe of Knowledge is recurrent, as we see from the

preceding account. What kept bringing it back to the policy-makers’
agenda? This account of policy change on higher education within the
European Community (EC) institutions draws attention to a factor in
the higher education literature. There were almost always well-placed
individuals playing an innovative and entrepreneurial role to advance
the idea of Community role in higher education. This happened over
almost every policy cycle accounted for here since 1955, regardless of
the very different historical circumstances. The evidence invites us to
make the generalisation that there are almost always politically skilled
individuals to respond in specific contextual and institutional circumstances
to the opportunity to advance policy ideas.
This chapter wishes to advance our knowledge of policy entrepre-
neurship in considering how and why some of these individuals acted
as they did. I have set out to answer the question by focussing on those
working in or around the Commission, including ministers present on
the Council. These are not the only individuals to have played an
entrepreneurial role in the development of higher education policy,
as will be clear from the narrative. But the entrepreneurs in national
administrations or in the foundations lie outside the initial research
concern which inspired this book. It was my interest in the Com-
mission which generated the questions of how do position and proce-
dure create resources for individuals who want to influence the course
of an issue or the course of a policy? How is the ‘career’ of an issue
related to the a career of an individual, as they have emerged in this
historically oriented research.1
151
As discussed in the introduction, many commentators on European

Community politics view policy entrepreneurs as institutions. There is

nevertheless a significant literature of individual policy entrepreneur-
ship. Within the last decade Roberts and King have produced a typo-
logy of entrepreneurs based on change agents in a study of American
schooling, to widen the concept of policy entrepreneurship to other
stages of the policy process.2 Schneider, Teske and Mintrom, revisited
the work of Schumpeter, who famously proclaimed that entrepreneurs
are innovators and their function is innovation, for their study of
American local government. Having conceptualised ‘public’ entrep-
reneurs – public policy entrepreneurs – in terms of a neoclassical eco-
nomic model, their view of entrepreneurs was as agents for change in
the local market for public goods.3
Germane to this study is the work which builds on an institutional
literature as applied to the European Community and/or Union. As
I suggested earlier, two examples stand out as relevant to this work.
Dudley and Richardson, in looking at the history of the European Coal
and Steel Community, identify individuals over several policy cycles as
instrumental in changing ‘policy frames’, alongside ‘power brokers and
political heavyweights’.4 Dyson and Featherstone, in their study of the
negotiations that produced European economic and monetary union
(EMU), identify ‘creative agents’ – and among them the promoters
of ideas, as well as the ‘animateurs, ingénieurs, and the more or less
skilled strategists, the more or less skilled craftsmen’. The insight for
this study is that they found personal beliefs functioning as ‘road
maps’ in explaining the behaviour of these agents.5
But Kingdon in adapting the original Schumpeter concept to the
political arena, and specifically the pre-decision process, remains a ref-
erence which others complement but do not replace. His study, in gen-
erating core propositions where the goal is to explain the linkage
between ideas, identity and function in the evolution of a policy
sector, has a continued relevance. Hence the first, and Kingdonesque,

proposition of this study is that policy entrepreneurs are identifiable
individuals with particular characteristics. They have a claim to a
hearing – expertise, an ability to speak for others, or an authoritative
decision making position. Such a person is known for political connec-
tions or negotiating skills, and more than likely to be persistent.6 A
functional proposition arising out of the Kingdon study of the pre-
decision process is that policy entrepreneurship provides a necessary
though not sufficient explanation of policy change in higher education.
Policy entrepreneurs have a function to perform in advancing a policy
Policy Entrepreneurship in EU Higher Education: Process, Actions, Identities 153
idea towards decision. They characteristically perform this function

with an exceptional degree of tenacity and skill. But even the most
wily and the most charismatic entrepreneur is at the mercy of events.
As Kingdon puts it, the window opens because of some factor beyond
the realm of the policy entrepreneur, but the individual takes advan-
tage of the opportunity. In an era before the word ‘tsunami’ entered
the language of horror, he could write ‘They are the surfers who wait
for a wave’.7
However Kingdon does not develop an understanding of beliefs, and
is little concerned with institutions. This latter point is no doubt evi-
dence of the stability of American governmental institutions, as con-
trasted with those in Europe. But the European Union (EU) studies
referred to earlier are persuasive in suggesting the importance of the
cognitive dimension and the instability of institutions. Dyson and
Featherstone make the case persuasively, on the basis of their evidence,
that it is the cognitive dimension of normative beliefs about economic
policy and historical memories, and by the transmission of knowledge,
which create the ‘road maps’.8 Noting that the EMU negotiations had
their own process of development, their own particular rhythm and
shape, specific to the subject matter and the precise historical context,
the factor which gave ‘the negotiations … a life of their own’ were ‘the
flesh and blood people whose motives were very complex and pre-
ferences by no means fixed, whose likes, aversions, ambitions and
manners played an important part in the dynamics of the process’.
This study, in attempting to deepen our understanding of policy
entrepreneurs by using these insights, incorporates the March model
which looks for a match of situation, identity and action, into the
explanation of policy entrepreneurship. My default model is thus that
individual beliefs and identities are likely to play an important part in
explaining the effort a policy entrepreneur will exert, and that the
wider context and institutional rules explain the opportunity. Hence
the following sections examine those policy entrepreneurs, who

were closest to the pre-decision process at European level, in terms of
their biographies and their opportunities. It starts with a presentation
of the selected policy entrepreneurs as linked to one of two policy
cycles: the first in 1955–71/72 – the period before it was agreed that
ministers of education would cooperate on education under intergov-
ernmental rules but according to EC procedures, a decision that created
a policy domain; and the second from 1973–87 when the domain had
been established and policy entrepreneurs were working to secure
policy decisions.
The policy entrepreneurs: who they were and what they did
Around 1990–91, when, as a journalist, I was reporting on EC educa-

tion, Jones was widely seen in the Commission as synonymous with
the domain. In the general view, he was the person who made educa-
tion a policy area, bringing it from nothing in the 1970s to treaty
recognition 20 years later. However, it was satisfactory from a theoret-
ical point of view to discover, through a historical narrative conceptu-
alised on the basis of agenda-setting, that there were always individuals
who could claim to have ‘made a difference’ to the development of an
EC higher education policy throughout its history – and even more sat-
isfactory that many of them were known names, but not known for an
interest in higher education.
This analysis focuses on the seven officials and politicians associated
with one of four outcomes: the 1957 Euratom treaty agreement to
create a university institution; the 1971 double agreements to co-
operate on EC education and higher education9 and to establish the
European University Institute;10 the 1976 mixed intergovernmental/
Community agreement to create the Action Programme in education;11
and the 1987 Community decision creating the Erasmus programme.12
I also include the ambitious 1960 Interim Report on the European
University, on which decision-makers never agreed, as an ambitious
example of policy design and failed entrepreneurship.
To recapitulate who these individuals were. In the policy cycles in
which neither higher education nor education were recognised as a
Community policy domain, they were Walter Hallstein, head of
the foreign ministry of the German Federal Republic, who worked
closely with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. As we have seen, in 1958
Hallstein became the first president of the European Economic Com-
munity (EEC) Commission; Etienne Hirsch, President of the Euratom
Commission (1958–61); Olivier Guichard, French minister of edu-
cation 1969–72 and Altiero Spinelli, Commissioner for industry and

technology 1970–72.
In subsequent policy cycles, the main policy entrepreneur was Hywel
Ceri Jones, who holds the record for longevity as an entrepreneurial
individual in higher education and education. He was successively
head of division for education and youth policies within the direc-
torate for education, training and youth policy in DG XII research
(1973–78), director for education and youth policy (1979–88), situated
within DG XII until 1980, and DGV social affairs until 1988. He then
became director of the task force human resources, education, training
and youth (1989–93), which he left to become deputy director-general,
and acting director-general of the DGV social Affairs in 1993. Of the

two additional individuals who played a critical role in securing

the Erasmus decision, Peter Sutherland was Commissioner for education
and social affairs in 1985, in addition to his main portfolio as Com-
missioner for competition, a post he held from 1985–89. Michel
Richonnier was the cabinet official working to Peter Sutherland on edu-
cation and training questions in 1985.
In terms of what they did, if we go back to 1955–57, Hallstein’s task
was to ensure that an issue proposed by the government of the
German Federal Republic reached a successful conclusion: this was the
proposal for the Community to establish a European University. I
claim that it was his advocacy that helped change events and get the
European University inscribed on the decision agenda of the six
foreign minister members of the European Coal and Steel Community
(ECSC), and that it was his work that led to the inclusion in the treaty
of an article establishing the European Atomic Energy Community
(Euratom), allowing the Community to create a university-level institu-
tion. Once the Treaty of Rome was enacted, Hallstein, as president of
the Commission, continued to act as advocate for the European
University.13
Etienne Hirsch emerged as a policy entrepreneur at the stage the
Council was making its second attempt to implement the Treaty of
Rome European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC) article on the cre-
ation of a university institution. His task was to produce a policy
design that would demand general assent. He, and the committee he
chaired, came up with an ingenious plan to present the European
University as one of several higher education issues on which the
Community could play a role, producing a map, or even a charter,
for a Community-related higher education strategy. The challenge, as
in any process of policy modification, was to build up shared beliefs.
But one consequence of Hirsch’s work was that General de Gaulle
demanded that education be removed from Community competence.

Olivier Guichard emerged in 1969, as an advocate for Community
on education in general. His task was to change the agenda – an opera-
tion that won broad assent. Altiero Spinelli initiated the institutional
transition that led to the formation of an educational bureaucracy
within the Commission from 1973.
Once there was acceptance for some kind of Community education
policy, Jones was the key official on education within the Commission
from 1973–93. His task unofficially was to try and get Community
competence for the non-Treaty sector of education. He was thus deeply
engaged in the pre-decision policy making which produced the 1976

Action Programme on education and, in 1987, the Erasmus programme

– the years under study here. From 1973–76, he was both advocate and
fixer, in getting recognition that the Community could lead the way in
supporting educational innovation, for example for early school
leavers, or for the children of migrant workers (children of EC citizens
working in member states) – both groups which tended not to rate as a
high national priority. At the same time he played a critical role in
securing political agreement for two innovative institutions which
recognised the primacy of national sovereignty in education but at the
same time institutionalised a Community role. These were the advisory
structure of the Education Committee and the ‘mixed’ process of deci-
sion-making for education which worked, as appropriate, to both inter-
governmental and Community rules.
From the late 1970s, Jones was effective as the strategist who mano-
euvred education policy-making ever closer to Community goals – an
objective ruled out in 1971 by ministers seeking to define the benefits
for education of a Community dimension – and into the social affairs
domain, in parallel with cooperation activities in which ministers of
education were the decision-makers. Jones was then a key member of
the team that secured the programmes of 1988–92, starting with his
work with the Commissioner, Peter Sutherland, and the cabinet
member, Michel Richonnier, to get approval for Comett (1986) and
Erasmus (1987).14 Jones was thus important in playing a key role in all
stages of stabilising and then advancing the higher education – and
education – issues, from policy idea (1973) to policy design (1976) to
decision (Erasmus, 1987).
I suggest here that Peter Sutherland took the critical steps in 1985
that ensured that the Erasmus project reached the decision-makers’
agenda, in a form that he expected would be approved by the Com-
mission and, eventually, the Council of Ministers. During the same
period, it was Michel Richonnier who secured the agreement of

the Commission bureaucracy for the legislative framework and for
unexpectedly large resources.
The explanatory framework

A way of interpreting the questions of how and why policy entrepre-
neurs act they way they do, is to understand the questions as requiring
an explanation of policy entrepreneur effort and policy entrepreneur
effectiveness. I have already argued, interpreting Kingdon as a method
for structuring a process in which many factors interact over time, by
thinking of the situation facing decision-makers in terms of the agenda

and alternative choices with which they are presented, we are part way
to an explanation. We can see how the process of agenda-setting and
alternatives can be analysed, alongside the events recounted in the his-
torical narrative, to provide an explanation of why and when the iden-
tity and the opportunities of policy entrepreneurs impinge on the
trajectory of an issue. James March goes one further in creating models
of decision-making as driven by a ‘logic of consequences’ or a logic of
‘the logic of appropriateness’.15
In order to understand policy entrepreneur effort, I have taken an
analysis of policy entrepreneurs’ prior life experiences as an explana-
tory factor for the beliefs they hold, to be set alongside character traits
such as tenacity or ambition, and the skills needed for the political
situation they faced. This use of life experience has been a charac-
teristic of several successful case studies of policy change, and is consis-
tent with an historical approach.16 Life experience may be interpreted
here to include national identity, professional identity and experience
of historic events. Linked to events – or in Barzelay’s phrase, ‘context-
in-motion’17 – the use of biographical information enables us to draw
inferences about the past to use in parallel with archives and other evi-
dence to explain policy entrepreneur action. This approach leads to the
formulation of topic-related questions: Why did policy entrepreneurs
do what they did? How did biographical (and, indirectly, historical)
factors affect individual identity and action?
A second set of topic-linked questions – why were the policy entre-
preneurs effective or less effective? How did opportunities for change
in EC higher education policy emerge and disappear? – is linked by
Kingdon to the opportunities the policy entrepreneur has the political
skills to exploit. In my view, the concept of opportunity needs more
explanation than Kingdon gives it. The way in which Kingdon presents
the concept of opportunity, which he projects mainly in terms of
events,18 is no doubt explained by his research in the comparatively

stable American political system. Applied to the unstable institutional
framework of the EC, however – and underlined by the historical nar-
rative presented here – the concept of opportunity must include the
positional resources available for the policy entrepreneur to exploit at
the time of intervention.
The following sections discuss these questions in relation to individ-
ual entrepreneur’s contributions to the policy cycles, or partial policy
cycles, that led to the 1971 agreement to co-operate, the 1976 decision
to agree a policy design, and the Erasmus Decision, 1987. The chapter
concludes with a survey of what this understanding of policy entrepre-

neurship identity and policy entrepreneur effectiveness adds to our

understanding of policy entrepreneurship.
Policy making outside a recognised domain, 1955–72
Why life experience led policy entrepreneurs to intervene

Walter Hallstein the first to intervene on the issue of higher education
in the Community, has been dogged in the past by the pejorative
judgement that he was an intransigent technocrat. Ralf Dahrendorf,
the German Commissioner in charge of education from 1973–74, was
one such critic.19 General de Gaulle in 1965, and the German rectors
also shared this view. Hallstein’s own account reflects how deep was
the mutual antipathy on the European University.
How much further would we have advanced if an unholy alliance of

reactionary and backward sections of the academic brotherhood –
which unfortunately exists also in Germany – had not steered the
original plan for a European University … into a blind alley.20
Recent scholarship, however, has been sympathetic to Hallstein with

some commentators suggesting that he was one of the key, and under-
appreciated figures of European integration, worthy of the title of a
‘founding father of the Community’.21 His book Der unvollendete
Bundesstaat, published in German in 1969 and in English under
the title The Unfinished Federal State in 1972, epitomised the view that
on Europe rules could never be made, cut and dried, for all even-
tualities. The book was a plea for a strategy of ‘reconciling the neces-
sary European unity with the protection of diversity … the basic
rule by which Europeans can live together’. European integration was
not ‘a static state: it is a process, a continuous creation … The

European challenge is continuous.22
There had been much in Hallstein’s experience to make him a pas-
sionate believer in an ultimately federal Europe. Born in 1900, he had
lived through the First World War as an adolescent. By the time of the
Second World War, he was an experienced professor of public law
appalled to see his country under a Nazi government. His personal
choice was to keep as far from the government as possible, preferring
to leave a post in the prestigious University of Frankfurt for the relative
isolation of Rostock, on the Baltic Coast. He was also marked by his
experience as an American prisoner-of-war. The Americans encouraged
Hallstein to set up a university within the PoW camp, for which he was
enduringly grateful. They also saved him from a Nazi assassination

attempt.23 This period provided Hallstein with enduring contacts, and
led, for example, to an invitation from President Eisenhower for
the Communities to make a state visit to the US, and to the Ford
Foundation’s offer to help fund the European University.
After the war, when Hallstein returned to Frankfurt to take up
the elected post of rector, he soon came to the notice of Konrad
Adenauer, Germany’s first post-war Chancellor. Many believe that
without Adenauer, Hallstein would never have had a historic role
in Europe. The evidence is that the view that the post-war ‘German
question’ needed a ‘European’ answer, was as much Hallstein’s as
Adenauer’s. It had to be a prime objective of German policy to return
to the international stage.24
Hallstein’s interest in education, which has not been studied,
appears coherent with his view that rules cannot be made, cut and
dried, for all eventualities. But the Community could do much to set
up the framework which would benefit the young, the universities and
the economy. It was a vision of a European Higher Education Area. In
The Unfinished Federal State,25 Hallstein argued that the Community
would need a common market of the intelligence’ to exploit the elec-
tronics-based industries of the future and to close the technology gap
with the US. A free market, liberating the movement of workers as well
as that of students and academics, could make a reality of the Com-
munity’s decision to strive for competition rather than protectionism.
But beyond that
Would not such a market – more than anything else – accord with
the concept and the tradition of a university, the most magnificent
form of cultural institution created by the European mind?26
In that context, the speech that Hallstein made at Messina, emphasis-

ing the German desire that the Community should be seen to be
doing something for the young, and proposing a Community-created
European University as the solution,27 can be explained as entirely
consistent with the beliefs that had formed him.
Etienne Hirsch In his unstinting effort to get a workable plan for the
European University, Etienne Hirsch was also driven by the personal
beliefs of a fervent European who wanted a federal solution. Like
Hallstein, he had been made ‘a European’ through the events of World
War Two. He had been a member of the French Resistance, joining de
Gaulle’s Free French Government in Algiers. But Hirsch’s life had been
even more painfully marked than Hallstein’s. Members of his Jewish

family and his in-laws had perished in Nazi death camps. He wrote in
his memoirs that in the post-war years, even shaking a German hand
was difficult though, ‘naturally’, he did it.28
Hirsch was the model of a high-flying technocrat who helped sta-
bilise French Fourth Republic policies and administration as gov-
ernments came and went, succeeding Monnet as head of the French
planning commission. Jean Monnet and the Commission’s first secre-
tary-general, Emile Noël, both greatly admired Hirsch. Monnet said
that whatever Hirsch decided to do, he did well,
mastering and simplifying the most complex problems. That came

with his engineering training. But I think that above all it was his
moral force, his legendary calm which enabled him to resolve prob-
lems which are wrongly described as technical since in reality they
are responsive to good sense.29
In December 1961, when Hirsch had an extension of his period of

office vetoed by de Gaulle, the young Nöel wrote to Hirsch, saying,
‘I am saddened and disappointed by the decision the six governments
have just taken, saddened by the injustice, disappointed that the
six governments have so easily torn up the most precious of institu-
tions, the independence of the men who compose the Executives….
[A]lthough I have never worked for you I will always be grateful for the
lessons of sang froid, and courage given simply and quietly and with a
sense of humour. Mr President, and cher monsieur, I offer you my
deepest sympathy and respect.’30
Given his training as a chemical engineer, Hirsch might have been
expected to back a scientific university. But although a senior servant
of the state, attracted to the European University as an educational
resource for training a future elite,31 it was consistent with his wartime
experience that Hirsch should see it as crucial to give priority to the
humanities. Hence the hard work to secure the agreement of foreign
ministers and diplomatic delegations that any future European
University should be a place where the young would be educated
together as being in part an instrument of reconciliation.
Hirsch’s passionate commitment, and the energy he was prepared to
commit to the projects he took up, emerges through the pages of his
autobiography. But so does his disappointment. He said of his work for
Europe, ‘of all the jobs which fate had handed me it was the one which
aroused in me the greatest enthusiasm.’32 In this context, the European
University was a project into which he had put ‘all his heart’ and about
which, he said, he felt ‘bitter’.33 But the question remains, should he

not have seen conciliation with the rectors as essential?
Olivier Guichard The personal factors that encouraged Olivier Guichard,
the French Minister of Education in 1969, to take an initiative to make
higher education – and, for the first time education – an issue for the EC
policy agenda, included a ‘de Gaulle’ factor. But whereas Hallstein and
Hirsch had been destroyed by de Gaulle, Guichard had been formed by
him. He became the General’s chef de cabinet in the post-war coalition
government designed to help France re-emerge as a great nation after the
Occupation, and to close the rift within France between Nazi collabora-
tors and those who had chosen to resist. The Gaullist experience of the
1940s’ near destruction of the French nation, inclined them to want a
European Community at the service of the nation state – an ideal of
‘L’Europe des patries’ – not a federal superstate. Hence, like de Gaulle,
Guichard believed that the Community offered institutional resources
and common knowledge that member states should share.34
Events played their part, too, in developing Guichard’s educational
vision and, we can assume, his determination to act. As minister of
education in 1969, Guichard dealt on a daily basis with a still greatly
unsettled university community after ‘the events’ of May 1968. At the
same time, he was frustrated by a lack of action in the one common
venue for EC ministers, the Council of Europe. His proposal – picking
up on the Bonn Summit agreement of 1961 – that the EC ministers of
education should co-operate reflected his no-nonsense pragmatism
that effective solutions were needed.
Altiero Spinelli Altiero Spinelli, the man responsible for establishing a
basic Commission bureaucracy for education and hence the moving
force in institutionalising education in the EC, is another giant of Com-
munity history. One well-placed European commentator says of him:
Few men have appeared and re-appeared at so many different stages

in the history of European integration, seeking to stimulate and
influence the process from such a variety of vantage points as
Altiero Spinelli.35
Spinelli propagated his federalist thinking from Mussolini’s prisons and

the resistance movements. He was the founder and long-time leader of
the European Federalist Movement. He was adviser to successive Italian
governments. And he was a member of the Commission, an MP
and, finally, an Member of the European Parliament (MEP) – a role he
combined with the position of leading advocate for a treaty of EU.
Spinelli’s European action spanned five decades and helped shape

Europe as we know it today.

With such convictions and life experiences, it is not hard to see why
Spinelli was ready to take the initiative on behalf of Community
higher education and education. Beginning his professional life as a
political journalist, followed by his wartime internment by Mussolini,
Spinelli turned into one of the earliest theorists of a federal Europe,
which he viewed as a rampart against the excesses of the nation state.
By the time he arrived at the Commission in 1970, he had been
Secretary-General of the European Federalist Movement for more than
a decade, the kind of senior lobbyist and counsellor that prime minis-
ters and presidents took seriously. Spinelli was a man of action, a
politician determined to make an impact. He writes that one of his
heroes was Sir Francis Drake, the 16th century circumnavigator of the
globe. Spinelli identified with Drake’s prayer:
Oh Lord God when thou givest to thy servants to endeavour any

great matter, grant us also to know that it is not the beginning, but
the continuing until it be thoroughly finished, which yieldeth the
true glory.36
In becoming a Commissioner – a development that surprised his

friends – Spinelli was adopting an alternative approach to implement-
ing his belief that ‘the purpose of the EC is to unite progressively the
destinies of several nations by the development of a body of laws and
institutions common to them all, obliging them to face certain great
tasks with a common policy and to adopt a common position and
responsibility towards the world outside.’37
Spinelli believed that, by the 1970s, the EC should be working on
an ambitious scale in new policy areas – for the reform of the
common agricultural policy, the creation of a European monetary
fund, regional policy, an agenda for industry, technology and the

environment, and a strengthening of the European Parliament (EP).
The book he wrote to coincide with Community enlargement was
not ‘a vague programme but as an agenda’ for the extended construc-
tion of Europe by peaceful means. He also placed a strong emphasis
on individual rights.38
Although Spinelli was highly critical of the extreme nationalism pro-
jected through many school systems, education was not part of his
core strategy. Indeed, education gets no mention as a possible Com-
munity policy in The European Adventure.39 His decisive action to get
his hands on this policy sector, in 1971, – ‘porteur de l’avenir’ – is most
plausibly explained by his recognition, as the Commissioner con-

cerned with research and technology, of the way such a policy could
serve the Community.
Why policy entrepreneurs were effective (or not), 1955–72

Exploiting supportive procedures In the period before higher education
and education acquired their own policy venue, individuals working to
advance EC higher education issues operated within a framework
determined by the central project for European integration. They could
not deploy their skills or exhibit their tenacity until they had identified
the opportunity for action or had the problem thrust upon them. The
opportunities consisted of events and procedures.
Messina was an opportunity for the Germans of the Federal Republic,
who had been nursing the idea of a Europe of the Intelligence, as the
account by the former professor, Alfred Müller-Armack, makes clear.40
Influential figures in and around government believed German univer-
sities had become isolated and inward-looking. This group was seeking
an opportunity to win support for their view, and the Messina meeting
was just such an opportunity. The prevailing political mood – both at
the meeting and back in the Member State chanceries – favoured new
ideas to advance European integration, taking it beyond the ECSC. The
six member state governments had been humiliated by the failures in
1953–54 to achieve a European political or defence community, and
badly wanted a success. The German proposal put forward at Messina
had the additional advantage that a project aimed at Europe’s younger
generation would play well on the international stage, and was consis-
tent with the Adenauer-Hallstein strategy of making post-war Germany
diplomatically visible.
The institutional and procedural structures available to the policy
entrepreneurs were in themselves resources for advancing a policy idea.
Hallstein and his colleagues would have identified the opportunity to
place an item on the agenda, and, as experienced diplomats, no doubt

calculated that the Messina meeting was the kind of occasion that typ-
ically had an overcrowded agenda. That meant many issues would be
carried forward for lack of time for discussion, rather than rejected out
of hand. That is what happened. As we have seen Paul-Henri Spaak,
foreign minister of Belgium and initiator of the Messina meeting, was
to write in his memoirs:
So many ideas had been advanced and so many problems examined

that the ministers were unable to make an altogether rational
choice.41
In negotiations thereafter, ministers – and their governments – agreed

that not every proposal had to be defined in detail before the signature
of the treaty: their attention was focussed on the big issue of how to
get a successful outcome on European integration.
The fact that proposal for the European University went forward to
the treaty to be incorporated as Article 9.2, albeit in an ambiguous
form must have reflected the judgement of Hallstein, as head of the
negotiating team, not to cause an unnecessary showdown with the
French before the treaty was signed. For he would have discovered in
May 1956 that the European University had been switched from the
draft EEC treaty to the Euratom treaty. Nor did he apparently object
to the ambiguous formula that went into the draft Treaty of Rome
(EAEC), according to which the Community would create ‘an institu-
tion of university status’. It allowed the Germans to interpret this as
the European University and the French to believe that they had
avoided it.42
But thereafter the situation changed. By the time the treaty was
signed and ready to be implemented, Hallstein was President of the
EEC Commission. On the one hand, he could bring to bear new insti-
tutional resources, in support of his Euratom colleagues and his own
personal prestige. For example, the contacts he had developed as one
of America’s elite prisoners of war, had enabled Hallstein to approach
the Ford Foundation for support in funding the European University,
should it be agreed.
At the same time, Hallstein’s greatest ambitions were focussed on
other fields, once he was EEC Commission President. The respons-
ibility for steering the representatives of the six through the debate on
what such a university should be had passed to the Euratom Com-
mission. He was in a characteristic situation of a policy entrepreneur.
The issue remains but participants change.43 Hallstein’s camp had even
lost the support of the West German foreign ministry’s cultural depart-
ment, which had chosen to back his old enemies in the West German
rectors’ organisation. This situation may have resulted from the arro-
gance that Dahrendorf argued typified senior public servants in the
post-war period. But it is equally likely that different institutional pres-
sures meant Hallstein no longer had to be, or wished to be, entrepre-
neurial on this issue, in order to fulfil his essential goal of advancing
European integration.
Facing a hostile context Hirsch was in a much more difficult position
than Hallstein over the European University. He was faced with a
problem for which decision-makers wanted a policy solution, and on
which there was a previous record of failure. Hirsch did not have a
‘solution’ ready for the ‘problem’ though he recognised the need to

produce an alternative.44 Furthermore, he was working with diplomats
and nominated university representatives in a diplomatic, not an edu-
cational, venue. Yet despite the relatively few resources available to
him, the alternative developed by Hirsch and his carefully constructed
Interim Committee on the European University45 was an ambitious
attempt at finding a solution to the European University issue through
classic processes of policy modification. Along with his assistant
Mercereau, and the committee, Hirsch had tried to build a broad coali-
tion, by recombining existing ideas into a ‘new’ package.46 Hence the
report made proposals for Europeanising higher education in general.
Examples of consensus building included giving a European dimension
to the national research and training institutes, as the French wanted,
and for making universities more European, through exchanges, as the
European rectors’ organisation wanted. Hirsch also succeeded in
getting agreement that when the European University was established
it would be in Florence, as the Italians wanted. So why did the process
of advocating an EC policy design, turn to Hirsch’s disadvantage?
If we follow Baumgartner and Jones, Hirsch was in the classic trap of
the policy maker who needs decision-makers’ approval. In putting
forward the Interim Committee report, its members drew decision-
makers’ attention to the fact that the key issue was Community power,
not the substantive issue of the universities. Hirsch himself had possi-
bly underestimated the real danger – which did not, in fact, come from
the German rectors’ organisation, as Hirsch, like Hallstein, had sup-
posed,47 but from de Gaulle and from member state governments.
Once there was widespread unease about using the treaties – together
or separately – as the legal base of the European University, as the
Commission presidents had advocated, no national government
wanted the Commission or even a Community institution as the
ultimate decision-maker on the subject.

However there are signs that on this issue, Hirsch never really under-
stood member states’ reticence. A telling exchange with de Gaulle,
which Hirsch quotes in his memoirs, has him telling off the French
president for not respecting Community rules on disclosure of nuclear
information, to which de Gaulle responds: ‘I am the judge of France’s
interests.’ De Gaulle ensured that Hirsch was not reappointed to his
post. The best that Hirsch could manage was to become a shadow min-
ister for de Gaulle’s chief challenger, one François Mitterrand, and to
promote the cause of the European University in a personal capacity.

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106 Universities and the Europe of Knowledge

Evolving a new strategy

The ‘Grey Areas’ crisis had lasting institutional consequences for

In November 1979 the situation remained deadlocked. Ministers had

munity’s educational activities by the cancellation of the ministerial

Only four years previously, the Italian presidency of the education

Council officials were responsive to the ever-determined Jones’

could only be dealt with within COREPER.60 Consequently, the

Commission’s usually steady allies in the European Parliament, while

regarded as important included many on social policy issues:65

o 1973: Commission proposal for a social action programme, followed

o 1976: establishment of Eurydice, the education information net-

work of the EC; the creation of the first programme on transition of

Jones maintained that such a move would strengthen Community educa-

Jones’ effective – some would say devious – tactic was to present DG

Furthermore, Jones’ efforts appeared to be in line with the concerns

However, speaking from a member state perspective, Banks, the

British official, had a different interpretation of what strengthening

adopted the arguments of his fellow Welshman, Jones, in order to

Developing support for higher education

It might have been thought that the Community’s higher education

mation on vocational training in Berlin known as CEDEFOP, and the

ECU in 1976 to 11.5 mn ECU in 1982, of which the Action Programme

‘Joint programmes of study, an instrument of European cooperation in higher

integration. His recommendations included the establishment of a

European Foundation. Raymond Georis of the ECF was tempted

of European awareness through history and cultural activities. They

potential for new EC action. The immediate opportunities for higher

education, however, derived from a different symptom of breakdown.

related to student mobility within the Community…. In many cases,

(i) Union-wide diplomas … other qualifications … and recognition of

periods of study (ii) the promotion of common or comparable training

Whereas in the period 1976–82, attention had been strongly focussed

The French director-general of the DG for social affairs, Jean Degimbe,

Thus in 1984, thanks to the combination of events and institutional

The sequence of events recounted here helps solve the puzzle, as to

cooperation agreed by ministers of education in 1976 and the direc-

tive of 1977 – no use was made of Community instruments during

Jones was working to find a less conflict-ridden venue for decision-

From then on, the contingency of a developing and more ambitious

Community played its part. In 1984 an energetic French presidency

Attaining a Goal: The Erasmus

Developing the Commissioner’s programme

An immediately precipitating factor was that breaking with a pattern,

commissioner for competition. He held the portfolios of social policy

vocational training and youth policy within the Directorate General

(DG). As Jones remembers, they were called in on a Friday. After a

Degimbe had suggested that we should play to French interests

Jones was already a powerful advocate on human resource issues,

atmosphere in the office as an ‘intellectual Wild West’, in which

‘adventurers’ could innovate:

Nothing was ruled out, nothing ruled in.10

to take the lead on a co-operative approach by the Community to the

Jacqueline Lastenouse in DGX, Richonnier was an enthusiast for the

cultural role of education. Indeed, in his view education was a necessary

There will not be a second generation of Europeans – as opposed to

From Sutherland’s vantage point, it was essential to ensure that

ative strength, Delors also stressed the human dimension of a single

I wish to be part of the attempt to rebuild confidence in the impor-