Between 29 November and 6 December, SFS chairwoman Caroline Sundberg and SFS's international committee, Komit, attended the European Student Union's autumn meeting in Cluj-Napopca, Romania. In addition to Caroline, the committee consists of Sandra Schriefer, Jakob Allanson and Andre Beinö.
ESUs have two annual meetings per financial year, one in the autumn and one in the spring. The autumn meetings mainly deal with political priorities and positions, while the spring meeting mainly deals with election matters and organizational issues. The meetings begin with knowledge sessions and seminars to work with the bills from the members' perspectives.
In Cluj-Napoca, a strategy for "social dimensioning", what we in Swedish call broadened recruitment and participation, and a position for "pan-European and proactive solidarity with refugees" were discussed. We also decided on the ESU's business plan and budget for 2016 and approved a new candidate member and a new support member.
Overall, Komit is satisfied with the final documents adopted at the meeting. Both the strategy and the position are close to SFS's principles and positions that have been firmly promoted to a European level. The ESU can now stronger with its memberships behind it push for higher education to be for everyone, regardless of where one comes from and what one's goals with the education are. Regardless of whether you are on the run, born into an academic family or have a disability, higher education should be a place for you.
The business plan for 2016 specifies the ESU's strategic priorities for the period 2015-2017. This includes initiatives for strengthened representation of under-represented groups in educational exchanges, a broader collaboration with the concept Students at risk, developed student influence in transnational quality assurance systems and the projection of a membership strategy.
Differences between SFS's council and ESU's decision meeting
For a group of Swedes who are used to being at SFS meetings, the meetings of the European student movement can offer some cultural clashes…
- Smoking indoors during the meeting? That's perfectly normal. Host host!
- All claim and exercise writing is done during the meeting! Unlike an SFS council where the exercise procedure is always done before the meeting to have plenty of time to prepare.
- At ESU, decisions are made through "active opposition" instead of "acclamation". This means that a membership that wants to oppose a proposal must lift their voting cards. If no one raises their voting card, the silence is interpreted as an approval of the request.
- The meetings start between 9-10 in the morning and continue until about 01:00 at night with a short break in the morning, lunch, afternoon (if time allows) and dinner!
- In some countries, disabilities are not recognized, others have it as a priority, issa believes that the integration of new arrivals is a priority, others want to create a safe journey home. Policy development together with 45 member corps with different political priorities and views from 38 countries is exciting to say the least!
Top three coolest people on site
In the European student movement there are many heavy profiles and talented debaters. Caroline lists her favorites from the meeting:
- Rebecca Stenkvist, chairman of SFS 2014/2015 who is now a board member of ESU. Rebecka played an important role in the work on the strategy for broadened recruitment and participation, she also helped to create a more democratic process when the proposal for the strategy was to be considered. Has reportedly been called a motorcycle knot by former ESU chairman Elisabeth Gherke.
- Bernadette Auersperg, President of the European Deaf Students' Union who attended the whole meeting and taught ESU more about accessibility. Some of us also learned short phrases in sign language.
- Jens Jungblut, PhD Oslo University participated in a panel on the European higher education area, EHEA's future challenges. Jens was also the chairman of the meeting who made sure that all new participants had a chance to follow the decision-making process at the same time as the older dinosaurs (what at FUM is called foxes) gave the new ones space in plenary.