UNL National Congress in Paris
Between the 5th and 6th April 2014, the Union Nationale Lyceenne (UNL) held their 9th National Congress at Paris-Sorbonne University in Paris, France. OBESSU was present to present its work on the European elections and co-organise a session on internationalism.
OBESSU’s French Member Organisation, with this event, celebrated twenty years of fighting for school student rights by bringing together over four hundred school student activists from around the country to debate, exchange and build a fighting school student union. During the Congress, delegates discussed pressing issues facing school students in France, which were identified as: reforming the school timetable, implementing new pedagogy and fighting for youth emancipation and the rights of minors. Delegates took this opportunity to explore the current education and youth policies of the French government and to formulate their demands to the recently appointed cabinet of Manuel Valls. UNL expressed its concern that the new Prime Minister, despite reaffirming priority for education, has not given sufficient guarantees to catalyse the important reforms awaited by French school students. In particular, representatives of UNL remarked that schools were not receiving the necessary attention from government and that awaited announcements on guaranteeing youth rights had still not materialised so they called on the government to take immediate action.
As part of a series of workshops, OBESSU presented its European Parliament elections platform ‘School Students’ Europe 2019’ and co-facilitated a session on internationalism, with the aim of engaging French school student activists in international issues and familiarising them with the school student agenda for the upcoming elections. OBESSU Board member, Luke Shore, explained the function of the European Parliament, explored possible scenarios for the composition of the new Parliament and presented OBESSU’s work lobbying each of the main political groups in the Parliament. This was followed by an exploration of theories of internationalism and the relative merits of bilateral, regional and Pan-European cooperation. Participants highlighted the importance of school student unions actively participating in and creating initiatives around OBESSU, as the European school student platform, which led into a discussion of the upcoming OBESSU conference on Education in Crisis and the possibilities for a joint international reaction to the economic crisis and the effects of austerity on education in Europe. Following the session, UNL activists resolved to debate these international questions in their local and regional organisations so that French school students could better feed in to the European education debate.
Written by Luke Shore
