Unrest as the Bologna Process reaches its 10th anniversary

"Students in several countries in Europe have protested against the national implementation of the Bologna Process. But the same students and student representatives across the continent are also trying to make the process work, by providing their view on how education can better meet the students’ needs. The education ministers of Europe should acknowledge the protests and follow up by giving students better possibilities for deciding on the present and future of their own education", says Ligia Deca, ESU chairperson.

The Bologna Process has entered its special anniversary year. 2010 was set to be the year by which a European Higher Education Area must be created. Though the process is not at all close to its end, the ministers responsible for higher education are meeting in Budapest and Vienna in March this year to celebrate this occasion and to reaffirm their commitment to the goals of the Bologna Process.

On the other hand, the European Union in the year 2000 launched its Lisbon agenda with which a strategic goal to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion was set for the decade. Higher education has been fundamental in further developments in the Lisbon Agenda.

ESU is organising a European Student Summit preceding the Bologna Anniversary Ministerial Conference. In doing this, ESU seeks to further promote students’ view on the reform agenda, but to also bring the students’ contribution to the ministers. ESU will present its limelight publication ”Bologna at the Finish Line” which takes a look back at what has been done in the past 10 years, but which also has a forward looking emphasis by making suggestions to the further action on the priorities that were set last year in Leuven/Louvain-la-Neuve.

Furthermore, the student summit will be the place where ESU’s documentary ”Faces of Bologna”, an attempt at giving the implementation of Bologna a human face, is screened. Finally, ESU seeks to make a declaration to the ministers on the students’ concerns and proposals for Higher Education in Europe during the next decade.