This book is based on my Ph.D. project ‘European Higher Education Institutions under EU Law Constraints—An interdisciplinary analysis of the position of European higher education institutions between directly applicable EU law and their public service mission’. It has been revised and developed further and contains additional new research. I started the project as I craved an academic challenge after having worked outside of academia in Indonesia for a year. At the time of thinking about a research project, a new field of research was emerging: the tensions between the economic and the social in EU law and policy. When I began the research project, I discovered my passion for competition law, a field in which I now feel firmly anchored and in which I am currently researching new exciting topics with a focus on ASEAN. Without the Ph.D. project, I would never have discovered this interest. Since the Ph.D. new developments have taken place within the topics investigated in this book. In particular, the recent developments in UK higher education policy and the adoption of the new Research Framework and General Block Exemption Regulation make the book timely and I hope to be able to make a modest contribution to the relevant debates.