During the past two decades, a shared set of norms and ideas on doctoral education and its purposes has emerged. As the EU strives to transform itself into a knowledge society, countries are expected to have more doctorate holders and orient doctoral education towards the non-academic labour market. However, the interaction between the changes on the European and the national level has not been explicitly conceptualized. This study aims to do that, discussing the different ways in which national policy actors have engaged with this European model in doctoral education. By channelling, buffering and filtering these institutional pressures, they navigate the relationship between the European model, their own preferences and the domestic situation. Using document analysis, we address the cases of Flanders and Portugal, two higher education systems which follow this European model, but also note significant differences owing to their institutional legacies and domestic context.