ESU has just released a new version of its much vaunted Lisbon Handbook. The reason for the existence of this handbook is the necessity to coordinate our work on all levels in order to strengthen the students’ voice in the EU Lisbon Agenda. Coordinating our work includes knowledge and information exchange, as well as joint priorities and actions.
The first step for an intensive exchange of knowledge was set at the European Student Convention in Vienna in March 2006. This handbook concludes and widens the discussions that took place there and should serve as a basis to take the next steps which will enable our voice to be heard loud and clear.

This is the second edition of ESIB’s Lisbon handbook. The first one, »The Lisbon Process—handbook for student unions« was published and handed out at ESIB’s 50th Board Meeting in May 2006 in Belgrade. Since then we have improved and actualised the articles, trying to implement the various comments we received from our members.
In order to facilitate your reading of this handbook, there follows an overview of the chapters in this handbook:
Chapters 2 and 3 offer an overview of the Lisbon Agenda, and answer the questions »What is Lisbon? And what does education have to do with it?«. Those chapters explain why the EU started the Lisbon Strategy, how it works and which priorities the EU has set for higher education.
Chapter 4 provides a picture of Lisbon that will be more familiar to you: It gives examples of the implementation of Lisbon in four European countries, both in the EU and not.
Chapter 5 is an overview of the different stakeholders relevant to education within the Lisbon Agenda. If we want to reach achievements in our lobbying of Lisbon, we need to build coalitions with other stakeholders. In this chapter you find an assessment of those stakeholders’ strategies, and some hints as to how to go about building alliances.
Chapter 6 deals with our strategy towards Lisbon. It is based on the discussions at the Vienna European Student Convention and following ESIB seminars, and addresses the necessary fields of further work and action.
In the Annexes of this handbook you will find ESIB’s Policy Paper on the Lisbon Agenda, the footnotes and the documents referred to in this handbook, as well as a guide to EU documents and a list of the authors that contributed to this handbook. In addition you will find a glossary explaining the terminology connected to Lisbon and education, as well as an overview of the abbreviations used in the texts.

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