AbstractThe European educational landscape is changing. Education remains formally under the sphere of the nation states and has traditionally been resistant towards EU involvement. Several recent initiatives from joint policy-making point towards increased standardization as a key element of European integration in education and higher education. The article builds on the notion of standards-based governance and outlines this as a distinct mode for policy-making in the EU, emphasizing incentives and voluntary implementation, the use of expertise and technical calibration, their quasi-regulatory nature of the process. The article draws on a number of empirical examples to show how standards have been used for higher education policy on EU level.