The Bologna Process has entered its special anniversary year as it was 2010 which 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 have met in Budapest/Vienna to celebrate that occasion and to reaffirm their committment to the goals of the Bologna Process.
 
On the other hand side, 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. And naturally, higher education has been fundamental in further developments in Lisbon.
 
Again, we are at a crossroad which leads us to logically question the very nature of these European reform processes and the state of their coexistence. As Bologna heads towards 2020 and the Lisbon Agenda is reinstated in EU2020 strategy, it is crucial to have a students’ view on them.
 
European Student's Union (ESU) has therefore organised a European Student Summit preceding the Bolgogna Anniversary Ministerial Conference. In doing this, ESU sought to further promote students’ view on the reform agenda, but to also bring the students’ contribution to the ministers. ESU presented it’s limelight pulication ”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 in 2009 in Leuven/Louvain-la-Neuve. Furthermore, the student summit is the place where ESU’s documentary ”Faces of Bologna”, an attempt at giving the implementation of Bologna a human face, was screened. Finally, ESU sought to make a declaration to the ministers on the students’ concerns and proposals for Higher Education in Europe during the next decade.

ESU - Bologna at the Finish Line