This article outlines the nature of the European Union (EU) as a sui generis political system with policy capacity in support of supranational integration and Europeanization and identifies the implications of this nature for European education policy developments. In so doing, the article privileges the perspective of European governance and the instruments that substantiate it, particularly expert groups, and acknowledges recent changes in capacities for socio-economic policy coordination at the EU level as an aspect deserving of further attention on the part of education policy researchers.