Over the past decade higher education reforms in most European countries have been oriented towards creating a European Higher Education Area which is envisaged in the Bologna Declaration. Based on an illustration of a variety of difficulties encountered higher education institutions in a wide range of participating countries, this article indicates a less optimistic view on the achievements to date in the Bologna Process. It argues that the tension of interests between the designers of the Process and its national and institutional practitioners undermines the actual progress towards the supranational objectives. It is suggested that most difficulties in relation to harmonizing national structures of higher education lie in the varying degrees of cultural dependency on traditions and academic autonomy across the engaged European countries.