ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how expertise shapes European policies in the field of education by borrowing concepts from political sciences and studies on expert groups. Policy learning gives rise to multiple definitions but it also shows the increasing strong intertwinement between expertise and different institutions and the variety of processes and modes of technical and scientific knowledge. The policy-maker explained that the expertise of his unit was limited but it had a lot of relations with a wide variety of ministries, research and expert communities, practitioners and stakeholders at the European level. In social interaction, the conditions of learning correspond to a political negotiation with a weak separation between experts and policy-makers. The objective of the European Commission is to build a European space of research and higher education supported by statistical techniques and performance-based measurements to promote competition between national systems in order to generate innovation and to support higher education systems contributing to growth and economic competitiveness.
