Information about the Partner

The National Unions of Students in Europe (ESIB), known also as the European Students’ Union (ESU) is an umbrella organisation of 47 National Unions of Students (NUS) from 39 countries. The NUSes are open to all students in their respective country regardless of political persuasion, religion, ethnic or cultural origin, sexual orientation or social standing. Our members are also student-run, autonomous and representative and operate according to democratic principles.

The aim of ESIB is to represent and promote the educational, social, economic and cultural interests of students at the European level towards all relevant bodies and in particular the European Union, Bologna Follow Up Group, Council of Europe and UNESCO. Through its members, ESIB represents over 11 million students in Europe.

ESU works to build capacity of national student representatives on policy developments in higher education at the European level and aims on influencing the respective agenda. Since decisions concerning higher education are increasingly taken at the European level, ESIB’s role as the only European-wide student platform is similarly growing.

Our work centres around supporting our members through

• organising seminars, training, campaigns and conferences relevant to students,
• conducting European-wide research, partnership projects and campaigns,
• providing information services and
• producing a variety of publications for both students, policy-makers and higher education professionals.

Why we are participating in IDEAS

ESU supports the main objective of IDEAS to expedite the eradication of the barriers that cause inequity in European higher education systems.

ESIB is actively involved in developing the social dimension of higher education, at present co-chairing the work group on social dimension of the BFUG. Also, the last years has been implementing European projects looking into social issues related to students and education policies – “Enhancing the Student Contribution to Bologna Implementation”, as lead partner; EquNet project, as partner; Peer Learning for Social Dimension Learning – as partner; Student Guidance at University for Inclusion – as partner.

Our role in the project

ESIB through its network will play a key role in promoting project results both to students as well as to policymakers. By authoring the policy recommendations white paper, ESU will ensure that those most affected by inequity – students, will have their voice directly reflected in the project conclusions.

ESU policy development on this topic as well as the network are seen by the partners as an imperative to the success of the project.

More specifically, ESU will contribute to identifying and analysing effective equity approaches, describing how to increase access, participation and/or completion of specific target groups given certain environmental/social conditions.

ESU will take the lead in preparing a policy white-paper on Enabling GrassRoot Equity Initiatives in HE- one of the main outcomes of WP4’ Supporting Grassroot Initiatives to Scale Up’.

Our project team

Elisabeth Gehrke, ESU Vice-Chairperson