Between November 17 to 23, SFS International Committee (Komit) participated in the European Students’ Union’s (ESU) 88th board meeting (BM). The BM was held in Oslo, Norway and co-hosted by our Norwegian sister organisation Norsk studentorganisasjon (NSO). BM is ESU’s equivalent to SFSFUM, and is held twice a year. Komit members Némo Chentre, Agnes Nyberg and Matilda Horn participated from SFS.
At the BM, decisions are made on all matters related to ESU, covering both political and organisational matters. For SFS and the other member organisations, the BM is important as it provides an opportunity to shape ESUs work and priorities. The first two days were seminar-days, followed by three days of BM. The overarching theme was democracy, a pressing issue in light of the challenges that academic freedom and student representation face today across Europe as well as globally.
During the first afternoon, the delegates attended the presentation of the Student Peace Prize. The student peace prize is a Norwegian initiative, and the prize is awarded biennially to a student or student organization working to promote peace, human rights and democracy. This year, the Nicaraguan organisation IPEN was awarded the prize, for their work on protecting Nicaraguan students that have been met with persecution and oppression. Monday consisted of a guided tour of Oslo, and seminars at Oslo University. On Tuesday, the delegates visited Utøya. They toured the island, learned about its history and had a democracy workshop. All in all, the first days leading up to the BM were emotionally challenging, but fostered many discussions about, and really highlighted, the importance of fighting for democratic values and human rights in higher education.
During the days of the BM, a few different policy papers and statements were decided upon. ESU adopted a revised version of the public responsibility policy paper that is now called “Fundamental values and solidarity policy paper”, and builds on the commitments of the Bologna Process. Furthermore, a statement on sustainability, and ESUs new strategic political priorities for 2025-2029 were adopted. The strategic political priorities consists of five main parts:
- A student-social Europe: about safeguarding equal access to higher education, especially in light of the increasing cost of living and studying across Europe.
- Democracy and governance: highlighting the importance of student representation, and the promotion of fundamental values within higher education.
- A future-proof higher education: about higher education’s resilience and ability to tackle global challenges. Includes internationalisation related to Erasmus+ and EUI, and sustainability of higher education.
- Student-centered digitalisation: focus on safeguarding inclusive digitalisation in education.
- A learner-centered E(H)EA. Entails two main areas:
- Flexible learning pathways and lifelong learning, including enhancing the process of recognition of prior learning and automatic recognition in Europe, promoting student-centered education, and opinion formation on the EU skills agenda.
- Quality assurance – including enhancing student participation in the European standards and guidelines, ESGs and opinion formation on QA frameworks within the European University Initiative, EUI.
Apart from ESUs policy papers and statements, ESU also adopted several resolutions. One resolution was put forward by ESU, and called for an improvement of the process related to the recognition of prior learning, RPL. In addition, several member organisations put forward resolutions to highlight and get support for issues and challenges they are working on or facing nationally. Lastly, a resolution on Palestinian student’s right to education, calling for international solidarity and support for everyone’s right to education and the protection of human rights, was adopted.
All in all, the BM was especially well organised and effective, marked by constructive discussions and the adoption of welcomed documents. Big thanks to NSO and ESU for hosting!