Lifelong learning and a learning society are important planks of European Union (EU) policy. Drawing upon the work of Foucault and Rose, this article examines some of the intellectual technologies that are deployed in the ordering of these policy goals. It argues that research is one such technology and examines EU Framework Projects to explore who is mobilised as a population to be ordered and how that ordering takes place. In the process it is argued that although a learning society is symbolically a European space, whether it is capable of translating the different interests within it remains open to question.