Implementing the Action Programme in Education, 1976–84

Abstract

The implementation of the Action Programme marked the beginning of serious conflict between the Council and the Commission, though this was mostly played out behind closed doors. Even Neave has only a brief mention of it, though his text exudes the sense of officials living dangerously, a common attitude within the education service of the Commission at the time.¹ The issue was Community competence. However in an unstable climate, strategies to engage higher education in European Community (EC)-wide activity — well down the Commission’s priority list for the Action Programme — emerged politically strengthened. This chapter explores how and why.