The Bologna Process and the construction of the European Higher Education Area: More than two decades later [1998–2024]

Abstract

More than two decades after the launch of the Bologna political process, it is important to understand how higher education is currently configured and the dominant conception of the university consolidated in Europe within the framework of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). A qualitative and interpretive approach was adopted, based on thematic categorical content analysis (Bardin, 2016), applied to 13 official ministerial declarations and communiqués of the Bologna Process issued between 1998 and 2024. These documents serve as key references for policy orientations in the field of European higher education and as instruments of transnational regulation that legitimise the circulation and institutionalisation of specific values and discourses in the daily life of institutions. The analysis made it possible to identify discursive regularities that reveal the consolidation of a managerialist and performative framework in the governance of European higher education, grounded in normative convergence, competitiveness, employability, and utilitarianism. However, there also coexist orientations that appear to counter this framework, evoking values such as cohesion, inclusion, and citizenship, which function as discursive devices of legitimation. It is concluded that, under the rhetoric of quality, innovation, and internationalisation, the EHEA reinforces dynamics of marketisation, distance regulation, and subordination to market logics, while maintaining a conciliatory discourse that seeks to reconcile economic rationalities with social commitments.