One of the main priorities of ESU for the Lisbon strategy is an increased involvement of students. Although ESU is still not a part of the working groups, the Commission is recognising us as a stakeholder. This is reflected in the amount of invitations we receive for conferences and the nature of these invitations. When I started in CoCo, ESU was mainly invited as a spectator and now we are more often asked as a speaker. During the latest initiative of the Commission, the University-Business forum, Ms Rossella Iraci Cappucinello, member of the European Students' Union executive committee gave a speech during a panel on perspectives for the future.

Involvement on the European level is crucial for influencing the recommendations and resolutions on Higher Education. However involvement on the national level is at least as important! The policies are implemented on the national level and the national contributions of the ministers in the council meetings are decisive for the future directions of the education and training 2010 program. The education and training 2010 program will not end in 2010 and the discussions about the follow-up are already starting. In the 2006 adopted joint interim report on the follow-up of the objectives of education and training systems in Europe. One of the recommendation that was adopted was this vague resolution:  

"Education & Training 2010" will succeed at the national and Community levels only if it is given its rightful place in the overall Lisbon strategy. The experience of the first two years of its
implementation shows the need to raise the profile and status of the European work programme a tall levels. If education and training are to be a driving force for the Lisbon strategy, "Education & Training 2010" should be duly taken into account in the formulation of national policies.
In the future, countries should better harness energies and overcome the current deficit as regards the involvement of all the stakeholders and civil society in general, in order to increase at the national level the visibility and impact of the European work programme. Ongoing campaigns to provide information and to make optimum use of it will be needed at both national and Community levels.

Little has been done since then to create national mechanisms for coordinating the implementation of the Education & Training 2010 program. Only in a view countries national stakeholders are involved and the level of involvement is in most of these cases is not pleasing at all. Maybe it is time that ESU and it members give a visit to the education ministers to remind them on their own statement. We don’t have to expect any hindering from the Commission on this topic since the Commission proposed in the draft of this interim report commitment to setting place national mechanisms coordinating the implementation of the Education &Training 2010 process by a definite date (2008). This would have mend that all of us would already be involved and as we all known this far from reality. Time for some action!

Stef Beek