Call of the Students' European Forum

Athens October 19-20-21 2007

We meet here in the faculty of Polytechnio, an historical place of Greek University, a symbol of the students´ revolt against military dictatorship (beginning on the 17 november 1973) and which also lived the recent student revolt against the unfortunate attempt by greek government to privatize the public university.

We meet here in the third Students' European Forum after the previous ones in Bakaiku and Paris, and we realize that our conditions of study continue worsening each and every day. A major reason is the implementation of neoliberal and capitalist counter-reforms, which are aimed at destroying our rights. The basic elements of those counter-reforms were elaborated by the institutions of the EU and the economical lobbys: this plan of privatisation is called process of Bologna for the creation of a EHEA, European Higher Education Area.

Its main principles are: increase of tuition fees, like in Portugal or Italy, financial autonomy and private financiation like in the spanish or french states, destruction of the collective rights of the students as future workers, increase of social selection, crowding out minorized languages of university...

The aim of the ruling class is to transform the university into a factory producing a majority of precarious workers and an elite of very qualified researchers and engineers.

Stopping the Bologna Process is a neccesity if we want to build a university which will be popular, public,free of charge, emancipated, respecting at every people, nationality, sexuality, gender... and accesible to everyone. We must fight against this process until its total supression.

The movement against the CPE and against precarity in the French state has proven that resistance throught struggle is possible.

The two years of huge student movement in Greece that succeeded in blocking the implementation of the Bologna process, shows that this process is not an unavoidable fact and that it can be defeated. But to achieve this, we need a combination of strong local movements and of coordinated strike back at the european scale by students, youth and workers. And we call on solidarity to all the represed for fighting the university and europe of capital.

We are facing an attack which is organized on a european scale. If we struggle each in his own place, we will maybe achieve temporary victories in a few places. But little by little, country by country we will be defeated. United we can win but separate we will be crushed. This means for us building an international network so as to have a coordination of resistances at european level. It means setting common campaigns, common days of action and participating in the international networks so as to meet with every force ready to fight against the privatization of higher education.

We want to spread and make the Students' European Forum well known, so when in 2009 the Ministers of Education of the countries applying the Bologna Process meet in Lovaina, the voice of the students will meet them too. We believe struggle is the way to success and so we want to start a campaign all around Europe, with common action periods around 17 November 2007//2008. We also call local initiatives during the summit of ministers, march 2009, so while the Students' European Forum gives them a response from Lovaina, the student movement will show its strength and determination all around europe.

Students' European Forum

Athens 21 October 2007