Conclusions: who benefits from EU policy-making in education? the European commission and the privatization of education policy

This volume presents contributions that have discussed the role of private actors in ‘statework’ in the area of education, and more specifically in the education policy-making of the European Commission. It shows the benefits of micro- and meso-level analysis to develop our understanding of the topography of privatization in different political arenas. On the whole, the market shape and the dynamics, actors and networks of policy privatization around and within the European Commission’s DG EAC are different from those recently described at the national level in European countries such as the UK and Italy (Ball, 2007; Grimaldi and Serpieri, 2013). The EU policy space is characterized by its own features, and cannot be fully understood without looking at its idiosyncrasies in terms of internal resources, accountability, power struggles, the need for acceptance by societal stakeholders and for legitimization.