What is the policy proposals document about?

The policy proposals document contains students’ recommendation. It focuses on giving voice to hundreds of students from the European Universities Initiative, including CHARM-EU Alliance ones. The aim of this document is to reflect students’ determination to be heard and to have a concrete impact on their future that could lead to a political response from the European institutions.

This student-centred initiative has  been raised in the framework of the Conference on the Future of Europe, launched jointly by the European Commission, the European Parliament and the European Council.

Highlighted recommendations

Students submitted a total of 89 recommendations on a variety of topics with the aim to help to design the future of Europe.  Democracy, EU common values, multiculturalism, migration policy, cybersecurity, health systems, agriculture and sustainability were some of the topics included in their policy proposals.

For example, in the document we can find recommendations aimed at reuniting European citizens under the EU values and reestablishing the feeling that citizens can influence the decisions made on a central level through bottom- up initiatives by proposing “the creation of local Panels about EU issues in each Member State”.

Further, another important highlight includes a recommendation focused on post-pandemic scenarios such as the increase of “risk management support within the Member States during health crises and incorporate binding elements in EU policy regarding the topic of health”.

Another highlighted recommendation was the Fundamental Rights on the Internet Era in which students propose “a European Charter on Human Rights in the Digital Era, inspired by the Portuguese Charter on this topic, as a way to harmonise the legislation amongst the Member States.”

Download the policy proposals here.  

Background | The EUC key actions

The creation of this document among the students was put in place by the European Universities Community (EUC). This initiative, launched by several European Universities, works for the following key actions:

• the contribution onto the multilingual digital platform of the Conference on the Future of Europe
• the Inaugural Session of the European Student Assembly
• the Manifesto on the Future of the Universities in Europe
• the promotion of multilingualism and multiculturalism within the student community

89 recommendations focusing on 10 strategic areas

Therefore, after the first European Student Assembly, where more than 270 students met in Strasbourg on 3 and 4 March 2022  to polish their proposals, the work was finished, and the document was finally created. The 89 recommendations of the document are structured in ten panels that tackle each one topic:

• Panel 1: How can the EU reunite its people around its common values?
• Panel 2: How can the EU become more resilient to cyber-attacks?
• Panel 3: Learning from the pandemic: Do we need a European health union?
• Panel 4: Agriculture vs. Sustainability – What cap for the future?
• Panel 5: Sustainable development or degrowth – What economic model can the EU adopt for tomorrow’s world and how can it be durably settled?
• Panel 6: Re-thinking democratic engagement in the digital age: How should the European democracy of tomorrow look like?
• Panel 7: social media: Opportunities and threats – How can the EU regulate digital platforms without limiting freedom of speech and the free exchange of thoughts?
• Panel 8: How should the EU position itself in a globalized world, vis-a-vis other actors such as the US, China or Russia, and with regard to conflicts in its neighborhood?
• Panel 9: Climate refugees as a new challenge for Europe – How should the European Union prepare to deal with refugee crises to come?
• Panel 10: Online is good. In person is better? How to build future-oriented, digitalised, and yet inclusive higher education systems across the European Union?

CHARM-EU commitment and student participation

This student-centered initiative goes in line with  CHARM-EU values which includes students at the core of its actions. Students are the future. If we want to build the university of the future, they are the answer. That is why at CHARM-EU we strongly believe in the importance of involving students in the decision-making of the diverse processes within the European Universities Initiative and beyond. Therefore, we feel so proud that some of our students actively participated in this initiative and made their voices heard: this project is aimed at and is for students thus it is especially important that students are key actors in this building process.