THE EUROPEAN LEARNED PROFESSIONS AND THE EU HIGHER EDUCATION PROJECT.

One of the most serious problems for those who are concerned with the structure and function of the power-knowledge nexus in contemporary Europe is the lack of a systematic scientific account of the rationale of the EU policy about both learned professions and higher education. The problem does not only stem from the still-living legacies of the past. It stems also from the EU need to provide EU governance with EU-oriented learned professionals in order to come to terms with the rising multidisciplinary complexity of EU decision-making and manage the challenges of current social, political and economic mainstreams. The paper deals with the above issues by focusing on the recent EU quest for expertising EU governance and governing professional EU expertise in a number of evolutionary stages: EU professional and higher education law-policy making; EU reaction towards the so-called 'globalization wave' as regards EU epistemic communities; EU 'learning economy' and 'Bologna Convention' models; the impact of the Nice Treaty on the re-assessment of European professional realms. The need for a European sociology of European professions is stressed in conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]