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The project of the Bologna process to create a 'European Higher Education Area' (EHEA) has established the necessary conditions for the emergence of a new sociopolitical space of higher education in Europe. This space has become a cooperation/competition area that changes the European and national balance of power: the relations the countries maintain both between them and with the European Commission are situated in a cooperation/competition game. The European Commission plays a central role in this area, alongside actor organisations who see themselves forced to discuss issues that had previously divided them and to modify their relationships at a national level. This article can be seen as a contribution to the analysis of international strategy in a global knowledge economy, especially to the two-level game theory of Putnam for which international agreements are negotiated with success only if they lead to national advantages. In particular, it studies the role of the European Commission in this sociopolitical area and the mechanism by which it has taken the piloting of the Bologna process, which was launched in a field of national competency, to make it an instrument for the realisation of the Lisbon strategy aimed at making the European Union the most competitive economy in the world. This paper is based on data sources provided by the analysis of papers produced by the actors of the process and on 50 interviews of these actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]