Sounds confusing, was confusing. Myself and Dan Chilcott went to Serbia for the 50th Board Meeting of what basically is the European Conference of all National Unions. After being delayed by 12 hours at Heathrow due to the Yugoslav Airways plane breaking, I got to Serbia ready for the first day of the Meeting. I was faced with what could only be described as laughable, no minutes to the previous 2 board meetings, and the blame being put at a former officers feet, who had been allowed to leave with laptops and all the documents needed, and the Executive Committee accepting no responsibility for this. I should note some of these are from over a year and a half ago!! (And we complain about NUS Conference).

Things did get better but only for a while. Due to NUS not paying its affiliation fees myself and Dan were not able to vote in the first set of elections and it took a big struggle to allow them to let us participate as well. It was eventually sorted but only after plenty of work and a lot of headache. And Dan putting in lots of work trying to smooth it all over, and getting very wound up at the same time.

ESIB has a gender balance for its Executive Committee elections to ensure 3 males and 3 females; however it has just created a Gender Equality Committee, which does not have a gender balance!!! Therefore during these elections 4 women were elected but only 1 male with another male not getting onto the committee. I found it very interesting that ESIB has no real gender problem in terms of equality and people standing for elections, but maintains a gender balance on some committees, and not others, especially the Gender Equality Committee. It did not put ESIB in the best light considering the inconsistencies in its structures.

This ended the first day and we were able to take in some Serbian hospitality with a traditional meal, which for me was fantastic, as I am a huge meet eater, and was presented with various different cuts of meat, and potatoes, but no vegetables. Dan, as a vegetarian struggled somewhat with the dinner and ended up dining on potatoes.

So the second day of our Serbian Adventure began with candidate members putting across their case for joining ESIB. Georgia was accepted, although there was no one there to make the case for it, and so will be visited by ESIB to investigate if its structures. The Ukrainian Union was not so easy, the gentlemen speaking faced many questions about the structures and politics of the Ukraine and it is interesting to note that there are around 7 National Unions in the Ukraine. In the end they were accepted and there will be a visit to Ukraine as well.

We then got into the policy papers of ESIB. Basically motions and debates with parts, but instead of being separate each is presented as a complete paper with around 500 lines in each, so you can imagine the fun had with parts! The paper on Prior Learning took close to 3 hours to complete with the removal of the chance to get an award through prior learning. It should be noted that it seems the main bulk of amendments and parts came from the same Unions, and many were instantly accepted by the Bologna Process Committee who wrote the paper.

Due to the scheduling of my flights I was not able to take part in the final day of the Conference as Yugoslav Airlines only fly a few times a week. However we gave our votes to the Austrian Union who have similar principles to NUS.

ESIB is one of the most confusing few days that I have had in a long time. We claim that NUS is inaccessible but if you look at ESIB then you will see how all amendments are handwritten and due in just a few hours before the time that we debate them. I jokingly asked Dan if it was like the Eurovision Song Contest and actually the way that the voting occurs is. The Nordic Unions all vote together and submit amendments that they all have to agree on previously. And the same occurs within other geographically close Unions. The impression I got was that NUS are on the whole not overly liked within ESIB as they seem to believe that we do not take it seriously and engage as much as we should. This is partly to do with the fact that most other Unions send their National Presidents, but also because we have not consistently sent the same people. It has to be said that they do love Mr Chilcott and his traditional English gentlemen persona (!).

NUS can however play a huge part in ESIB and we can drive it towards more equality and liberation issues. The work that occurs on the Bologna Process will have a huge impact upon our students when it is fully implemented and ESIB has the European recognition that we can feed into.

So for those NEC taking on ESIB responsibility good luck, it will be a challenge

I hope you have a greater insight into the workings of the European Union of Students.

Cheers,

Richard ‘Bubble’ Budden

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