Last week saw NUS hosting the 10th European Students Convention in London. It’s traditional for the National Union of Students from the country which holds the EU Presidency to host the European Students’ Convention. The aim of the event is for student officers from across Europe to unite around issues that affect education. Based on a central topic chosen by the host country’s NUS, it aims to inspire, mobilise and inform them in their work with students from all over the continent.

The theme chosen for this convention (2 years ago when NUS declared they would be hosting it) was research. There were various difficulties which meant the planning and event organisation was extremely last minute! The timing meant we couldn’t include an event for UK officers on the Bologna process, although I still hope this will go ahead in the New Year. I was also a little frustrated that this topic didn’t give us more scope to utilise our most developed expertise.

However the conference did take place (apparently costing various ESIB members in lost bets) and was a success by all accounts. The list of 50 participants included delegates from Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Norway, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine.

Besides dealing with the main topic and deciding proposals for ESIBs policy and work on this area, the convention provided a chance for other Unions to see NUS UK and it’s constituent members. It was a good opportunity for NUS UK to meet European delegates and perhaps gain a new perspective on our own activities. I know my NEC colleagues were variously enthused, impressed, disappointed and surprised by their discussions with European counterparts (I’ll leave it up to them to elaborate).

I was keen for this to be one of the benefits. NUS UK has traditionally been rather isolationist on a European level (conforming to national stereotypes then) and this is something I’d like to change.

I set up a meeting between our Liberation officers and ESIB’s Equality Working Group which discussed possibilities for training and common work on a number of areas, including the policy recently passed at LGBT conference to work on Euro-pride. We also talked about how best to develop the work of the newly formed ESIB Gender Equality Committee which will tackle issue of women’s equality within ESIB and it’s member unions. There was a surprising amount of opposition to this at ESIB’s last board meeting and I think one of ourt key tasks is to raise the understanding of why and how equality is an important issue for Students’ Unions to be tackling.

There were other areas of common interest, with the Ukrainian delegate seeking to learn about our NUS card system, citing it as best practice in the development of their own scheme, and the Estonian delegates proposing co-operation on our new International twinning project.

As a general observation, the comments of many of developing unions made me realise just how lucky we are in NUS UK, and how far we have come since our inception back in the twenties. We have an impressive record of galvanising the biggest and most diverse democratic students’ movement in the world. You don’t have to look far to find a flourishing union, with great facilities led by dedicated, self-assured, talented officers. Being founded as an international movement I’d now like to see NUS using this track record and expertise to spread good practice and train others in our key areas of knowledge. We also have a history of being open to new ideas (Endsleigh and STA are prime examples) and I think there are great possibilities for us to learn from other national Unions too.

All in all I’m glad the convention was able to go ahead, and I think everyone who participated profited from their involvement. I hope we can now build on this and create lasting relationships which work to further Education policy in Europe within ESIBs current remit and also support the mutual development of our national unions to expand ESIB’s horizons in the future.

If you’d like more information about the event or ESIB in general then please get in touch.

dan.chilcott@nus.org.uk

www.esib.org

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