Transcript THE ISLAMIC WORLD (QA ISLAMIC) WORKSHOP

THE ISLAMIC WORLD (QA ISLAMIC) WORKSHOP
Differentiated integration and
the Bologna Process:
Implementation and
CYPRUS,
28-29 MAY 2015
convergence
problems
Alberto Amaral
Cipes/A3ES
From the Portuguese M. Education
(Bologna a declaration, not a treaty)
The Bologna Declaration was meant to be a
declaration of an exclusively political nature and
all its words were analysed in great detail to
avoid excessive embarrassment to any country...
Such a document is both remarkable and vague.
What is important is to understand that it is a
political declaration, each party having surely its
own intentions in its country.
Policy implementation problems in Europe: how
to implement policies when there are 28 (48)
countries with different cultures, economic
levels, interests, problems…?
•
Differentiated integration
•
Soft law mechanisms
•
Careful drafting of legislation (weasel words)
Differentiated integration: Flexibility is at the core of differentiated
integration as it refers to ‘the possibility for different member states to have
different rights and obligations with respect to certain common policy areas
(Kölliker 2001: 125).
Variations and disparities between the member states are often associated
with the diversity of interests, the growing complexity of decision-making and
diverging expectations towards integration (Emmanouilidis 2007).
Alexander Stubb (1996) made the first attempt to categorise differentiated
integration using the variables “time” (multi speed), “space” (variable
geometry) and “matter” (à la carte). Bologna is seen as an example of the à la
carte model.
Soft Law: those nonbinding rules or instruments that interpret or inform
our understanding of binding legal rules or represent promises that in
turn create expectations about future conduct” (Guzman and Meyer,
2009:
5)
Soft law is useful to solve straightforward coordination games in which
the presence of a focal point is enough to generate compliance; the
delegation theory explains why under certain circumstances soft law will
be an effective way for states to control their uncertainty over the future
desirability of legal rules adopted today (Guzman and Meyer, 2009).
Reputation is important in encouraging compliance with international
law, which explains the ‘naming and shaming mechanisms’ that are
usually associated with the OMC. When states fail to comply with an
agreement they loose international credibility “and this will make it more
difficult to enter into future promises (Guzman and Mayer, 2009: 22).
Policy making in the EU (hard law) – The community method. In the
traditional method of governance, the EC has the monopoly for initiating
legislative procedures. The Council of Ministers decides in most cases by
qualified majority voting, the European Parliament plays an active role
and the European Court of Justice ensures the uniform interpretation of
Community Law (Wallace, 2000).
The Luxemburg compromise (majority vote):
Where… very important interests of one or more partners are at stake, the
Members of the Council will endeavour, within a reasonable time, to reach
solutions which can be adopted by all the Members of the Council while
respecting their mutual interests and those of the Community.
European politics use carefully weighed wording, designed to overcome the
incapacity of member states to agree on essential goals and priorities. The
use of ‘weasel words’, enhances and reinforces the supranational role of the
European Court of Justice (ECJ). The EU Treaties and laws are frequently
characterised ‘by a high degree of fluidity and vagueness’.
The Community method and the characteristics of European political
processes have allowed the EC to increase its competencies, backed by the
ECJ’s extensive interpretation of its mandate (Schäfer, 2004). This ‘creeping
competence’ of the EC (Pollack, 2000) is known as ‘agency loss’ in the
literature on delegation (Schäfer, 2004).
In the early 1990s, national governments decided to oppose further expansion
of the EU’s competencies that were eroding the sovereignty of the nation
state (Dehousse, 2002: 2). Some governments were annoyed with directives
imposed by the new qualified majority voting rule (Pollack, 2000).
This reaction brought about the revival of the subsidiarity principle in the
1992 Maastricht Treaty with the famous ‘double negative’ formulation of the
principle in article 5: In areas which do not fall within its exclusive
competence, the Community shall take action, in accordance with the
principle of subsidiarity, only and in so far as the objectives of the proposed
action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member State and can,
therefore, by reason of the scale or effects of the proposed action, be better
achieved by the Community. (Pollack, 2000: 526)
OMC – The Lisbon strategy retrieved the procedures already implemented
with the Employment Strategy – European guidelines, national action
plans, peer review and naming and shaming – that were presented as a
quasi-novelty under the name of ‘open method of coordination’
(European Council, 2000).
OMC is compatible with the subsidiarity principle, allowing the
implementation of policies without further power delegation to the EC,
avoiding agency loss. The OMC …appeared as a compromise between a
desire for common action, on the one hand, and the governments’ desire
to maintain some degree of control over tools they considered essential
for their political future, on the other (Dehousse, 2005: 7).
As member states remain in control of politics they feel the nonbinding
character of soft law protects them from undesirable consequences.
Bologna – In areas such as education, which the European treaties have
reserved for the legal command of national authorities – subsidiarity
principle –, the EU could not use the traditional ‘Community method’ of
passing European legislation.
Decisions are reached by consensus of the ministers for higher education of
the signatory countries involved. This approach acknowledges the diversity
in Europe’s HE systems. The most important forum in the decision-making
process was the biannual ministerial conference, to assess progress and to
plot the course for the near future.
The Bologna process has resulted in important changes in European national
HE systems, converging to a common degree structure. However, a more
detailed analysis reveals substantial lack of convergence towards the
endorsement of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA).
The first references to implementation problems of the Bologna process were
made in the 2007 Trends Report: employment difficulties of the new Bologna
graduates, incorrect or superficial use of ECTS, low implementation of the
Diploma Supplement, confusion over national qualifications frameworks,
disincentives to mobility and difficulties with recognition of periods of study
abroad. The 2010 Trends Report also refers to most of those problems.
The 2010 report – The Bologna Process Independent Assessment – recognises
there is a “large difference in the speed of implementation by individual
countries” creating a “European Higher Education Area of different speeds of
implementation and varying levels of commitment” (European Commission,
2010: 6).
The 2015 Trends Report refers again unsolved problems: national
qualifications frameworks have not engaged the academic community;
credit recognition is still a problem; national policy agendas are diverging;
shift to professional education; difficulty with the implementation of
learning outcomes.
Yerevan communiqué: …implementation of the structural reforms is uneven
and the tools are sometimes used incorrectly or in bureaucratic and
superficial ways. Continuing improvement of our higher education systems
and greater involvement of academic communities are necessary to achieve
the full potential of the EHEA.
Differentiated integration: Discretionary aspects associated with policy
enactment underline how national agendas and academic cultures are
influenced by their own dynamics and disciplinary values. The perceptions of
institutional actors vary depending on their institutional position, from
academics in the central management of higher education institutions to the
administrative and management staff.
A critical view of the Bologna process
The replacement of ‘employment’ with ‘employability’, one of the buzzwords
of the Bologna process, has contributed to the individualisation of social
problems (Streickeisen 2009) by making unemployment or poverty the
responsibility of individual misconduct.
Under the Lisbon Strategy, social problems derive from deficient knowledge,
education and (occupational) training, being the responsibility of each
individual to invest a percentage of his salary in long life education in order to
remain employable.
Streickeisen denounces present policies: “in order to limit unemployment,
governments should not create jobs… rather they should provide incentives
and sanctions so that the jobless either engage in further training to improve
their ‘employability’, or accept jobs they might have turned down before”
(Streickseisen 2009: 186).
Peter Streckeisen argues “the system of capitalist production does not consume
only `dead knowledge'; it cannot operate without the use of `living knowledge',
that is, the exploitation of the capacities and the skills of numberless
jobholders” (2009: 194).
In Europe, by promoting a student-centred learning paradigm, aiming at
tuning education to short-term labour market needs, the Bologna process has
developed a utilitarian view of higher education as a key element in a strategy
of economic growth and competitiveness (Sin and Neave, 2014).
The “permanent demand to match skills requirements serves as a mechanism
to limit the relative autonomy of the education system vis-à-vis capitalist
production” (Streickeisen 2009: 194).
THE ECJ – The European Court of Justice has developed a body of
jurisprudence that regulates issues such as access, capacity, quality, student
allowances and labour market needs, and that should be considered at least
an even more important contribution to the European Higher Education Area
(EHEA) than the Bologna process.
Many of those involved in the Bologna Process may be surprised by the work
already done by the ECJ. The ECJ is probably more important than the
conference rooms of Bologna and national legislators when it concerns the
genesis and development of the EHEA.
With the passing of time, the ECJ has become the architect of ever more
numerous institutional innovations, transforming and constitutionalising the
Treaty architecture, and amending both the horizontal (inter-institutional) and
the vertical (EC – Member States) division of powers in equal measure.
The set-up of the Treaties makes judicial activism unavoidable: after all, the
original EC Treaty (now the “Treaty on the Functioning of the Union”) was a
‘traité-cadre’ or framework treaty, which regulates few topics in exhaustive
detail.
In addition, treaties as such are said to be a most particular genre, products
of protracted and laborious negotiations. The end-result of such negotiations
is usually a vague and open-ended patchwork, replete with delphic formulas
that reflect hard-wrought compromises.
Some authors point to Article 220 EC (now Article 19 TEU), which is believed
to contain an exceptionally broad mandate for the Court to lay down rules of
law in accordance with its own preferences: the Court was actually expected
to come up with solutions to legal controversies that the negotiating parties
had failed to address.
Thus, the fact that something is not mentioned, or not fully covered by treaty
provisions should in itself never be considered decisive: this is meant to leave
room for detailed new rules that the ECJ may rightfully bring into being.
On top of all this comes the aspect of multilingualism: the Treaties, as well as
many of the instruments of secondary law, are available in a plethora of
languages, which are all considered equally authentic. When provisions are
not phrased in identical or even similar wording, the Court employs a number
of techniques to try to seek out the framers “common intention, but is often
left no other choice than to craft a solution of its own”.
Dr. Alberto Amaral
(President, Agency for Assesment and Accreditation of Higher Education)