The Nordic Conference of Presidents (NOM) is a collaboration between Nordic and Baltic national student representatives. Caroline Sundberg and Simon Asplund represented SFS's international committee KOMIT at NOM and they have written a report from the meeting.
Caroline Sundberg and Simon Asplund
Friday, November 4th
It is a chilly autumn morning when the delegation from KOMIT begins its journey towards our eastern neighbor. The delegation consists of an experienced but morning tired Caroline Sundberg, a veteran from many previous international meetings, and a nervous but energetic Simon Asplund who makes her debut in KOMIT.
Once in Helsinki, our first destination is the Eurooppasali / Europasalen, which is a common public space for the European Commission's Representation in Finland and the European Parliament's Information Office.
We are welcomed by our hosts, the two Finnish national student organizations SYL and SAMOK, and have a long-awaited lunch. After that, we start with the weekend's first seminars. The theme is European advocacy work and the program begins with short presentations from the organizations present. We present how SFS works to influence decision-makers at European level.
The first seminar also includes a historical review of NOM (Nordic Chairman's Meeting), a collaboration that has been going on for 70 years. When the collaboration began in 1946, issues such as international mobility for students, comparability and validation of foreign degrees were on the agenda. Some issues seem to remain relevant to the student movement.
After this, we were visited by Sirpa Pietkäinen, Member of the European Parliament (so-called MEP). From her we got an insight into the EU's education policy. Sirpa Pietkäinen described an EU where education is certainly mentioned with grand formulations, but which is not covered by major economic investments. Agriculture still accounts for the majority of the EU budget. The EU also does not have the right to legislate on education issues, but can make recommendations to the member states.
After the end of the seminar and check-in at our hotel, an excursion followed which we will soon forget. We were treated to dinner, presentation and sauna by the Finnish state gaming company, which is a main sponsor of the Finnish student movement. Historically, sauna meetings have been used by Finnish foreign ministers as a negotiating strategy. We can understand why.
Saturday 5 November
Saturday began with a presentation from ESU (European students' Union). SFS are members of ESU who represent students in Europe. Blazhe Todorovski (Vice-President, ESU) and Liva Vikmane (Vice-President, ESU) spoke about their advocacy work at European level and gave us an update on issues relevant to students.
Among other things, we heard about:
- The New Skills Agenda for Europe
- European Student Card - an issue raised in the European Commission
- Erasmus + mid-term follow-up
- Brexit Deal
The New Skills Agenda for Europe is a proposal that will bring together national skills strategies. Here it is important for the student movement to be active and argue for the skills we need to be able to be employable in the long term and not just tailor-made educations for specific jobs.
The proposal for a European student card has been initiated in the EU Commission and aims to facilitate mobility and validation for students. But it also risks hitting the student unions' finances, perhaps especially at the local level in Sweden, where many unions cooperate with the Student Card or Mecenat. ESU has called on the member organizations to submit their views on the issue and KOMIT recommends that SFS respond critically.
The day also included sessions on EU lobbying and advocacy at European level. We got to meet representatives from the European Youth Forum who told us how they worked.
The sessions ended with a workshop, where health insurance among European students and a European student card were discussed.
Sunday 6 November
On Sunday, the official Nordic Presidency meeting was held and the agenda included a resolution for "Intergenerational Justice" and an initial discussion to produce a joint document with priority political issues for the Nordic countries within the framework of the Nordic Council of Ministers' work. At the next meetings, we will return to the discussion and hopefully make a decision. Bringing NOM back to a greater focus on Nordic education policy in parallel with networking can be an interesting and rewarding process!
The next meeting with NOM is in Iceland 6-10 April 2017. The proposed theme is "Financial Support Systems for Student". We look forward to this and have requested that we prepare a resolution for the meeting that we can use vis-à-vis the Nordic Council of Ministers.
In the evening, a dinner was held to celebrate 70 years of collaboration within NOM. Many alumni were present and spoke warmly about the collaboration over the years. This also ended the journey for KOMIT this time, and the next morning it was home.
The NOM meeting in Helsinki came with informative seminars, important information and the opportunity to broaden our networks. We look forward to using these during the ESU's board meeting in Gdansk (Poland) 28 November - 4 December 2016.
Kind regards from SFS International Committee, KOMIT
by Simon Asplund and Caroline Sundberg