Discretional policies and transparency of qualifications: changing Europe without money and without States?

The paper aims to contribute to the European education policy literature through an analysis of what I refer to as ‘discretional policies’, which are now instrumentally used by the EU but that have so far been largely overlooked by this literature, and to the literature on transparency of qualifications. The paper argues, first, that the education policy literature—as other policy literatures—has overlooked individual ‘discretional policies’, to which greater attention should now be paid as they are employed by EU institutions to bypass Member States in particularly difficult policy areas and to try to address their often alleged detachment from citizens. Second, the paper looks at the crucial aspect of the effectiveness of discretionary policies and their consequences for individuals and Member States, with reference to a case study of the Europass framework in education and training