Adapting on French Terms: The Evolution of French Secondary Education Policy in the Context of the Bologna Process, 1993–2026

This study examines how French secondary education policy evolved under the influence of the Bologna Process between 1993 and 2026. Using Simon Bulmer's domestic politics approach to Europeanization, it traces the structural transformation of the lycée and the Baccalauréat from a rigid, self-referential system organized around fixed academic tracks to a modular, competency-based one integrated with the European Higher Education Area. The analysis is organized around Bulmer's four pillars: institutional architecture, governance regimes, misfit and adaptational pressure, and the two-way dynamic of uploading and downloading. Drawing on legislative texts, policy documents, statistical data, and scholarly literature, the study finds that French secondary education did not simply converge toward a European model but adapted on French terms. Centralized institutional architecture enabled sweeping national reforms, soft law governance allowed France to set its own pace, ideological misfit shaped adaptation without blocking it, and France uploaded its own preferences to the European level even as it downloaded European frameworks. The study concludes that Europeanization in sovereignty-sensitive domains like education operates less through direct imposition than through prolonged negotiation between supranational pressure and domestic institutional mediation.