Student representatives meet in Vienna to elect a new leadership

VIENNA – Representatives of 47 national unions of students are now gathering in Bratislava, Slovakia, and Vienna, Austria, for the 66th Board Meeting of the European Students’ Union and a presentation on the Challenges of Student Mobility in Cosmopolitan Europe project (CoSMiCE). This event will end in Vienna on 4 May, when ESU will have elected its new Executive Committee and Presidency members.

ESU organises a Board Meeting twice a year, which functions as the highest governing authority of the union. Elections are only held once a year, usually in the spring meeting. The new executive body will start its mandate on 1 July, succeeding the current one that has been led by the Slovenian Rok Primozic as a Chairperson. ESU will today organise an election debate in Vienna starting at 17:30, where you are invited to share your questions or comments with the candidates by using the hashtag #BM66 on Twitter.

These meetings are held in collaboration with ESU’s member unions. This time the national unions of students in Austria (ÖH) and Slovakia (SRVS) are co-organising the event, making sure that all the participants will have an enjoyable stay.

Those two unions are also together running the CoSMiCE project and kicked off a seminar on the topic in Bratislava on 29 April. You can read more about the CoSMiCE project in a separate article here and download a Reader that was made especially for the seminar here.

Policy paper on the Bologna Process

On 1 May, the participants will continue their way to Vienna to attend ESU’s Board Meeting, where delegates of the 47 national unions of students that are members of ESU are expected to debate and vote on resolutions, statements, policy papers and documents that are related to the internal function of ESU.

Among the key documents that will be introduced at this meeting is a policy paper on the Bologna Process that will lay out the students’ views on the current status of that development and priorities from their perspectives. This paper will be presented as the second part of a policy paper on European governance of higher education that will structure ESU’s views on what role authorities, such as national governments and the European Union, should play in forming higher education in Europe. The first part of this document was already introduced at the 65th Board Meeting of ESU in Zagreb, Croatia.

In addition to this, there will be amendments introduced to a policy paper on the quality of higher education that was adopted at the 64th Board Meeting in Budapest, addressing issues such as learning outcomes, employability etc.

As usual, the national unions of students will also have the opportunity to seek support of their peers to various issues of their concern. These resolutions do often shed a light on the development of higher education at the national level.

A new application for membership

This Board Meeting is not only expected to discuss new or existing developments in higher education. Membership issues are a fixed topic of discussion and this time ESU is proud to present an application from the Turkish Youth Association (T-Youth) to join the union. The Board Meeting will debate this new application and vote at the end on whether it should grant T-Youth a candidate status. Should that happen, it would make T-Youth the fourth candidate member organisation for a membership of ESU.

Please find the Readers created especially for the events and other practical information on the event page here.

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For more information, please contact:

Rok Primozic, ESU’s Chairperson: +32/479.126.390 // rok@esu-online.org or Robert Hlynur Baldursson, ESU Communications Manager: +32/473.669.894 // robert@esu-online.org