On 4–6 September 2025, SGH Warsaw School of Economics hosted the second edition of the European Universities Student Ambassador Forum (EUSAF) carried out as one of the pillars of the EUC Voices. Student ambassadors from 45 European university alliances came together in Warsaw to exchange experiences, discuss challenges, and explore new ways of fostering student engagement across the alliances.
The European University Alliances initiative, launched in 2017, has expanded rapidly. In five calls for proposals (2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024), the European Commission selected 65 alliances, now uniting more than 560 higher education institutions from all over Europe.
Since joining the CIVICA – European University of Social Sciences alliance in 2022, SGH has played a leading role in building an active student community within CIVICA and strengthening the sense of shared European identity. This experience also positioned SGH as a key partner in the EUC-VOICES Erasmus+ project, where together with the Erasmus Student Network (ESN), it coordinates Work Package 3 (WP3): European Universities Student Ambassador Forum. The project aims to amplify the voices of young Europeans, equip them with competences for active citizenship, and strengthen their role in shaping the future of European universities. Alongside EUSAF in Warsaw, the project also includes the Strasbourg-based European Student Assembly (ESA) and the creation of an EUC-VOICES alumni network. The project is run jointly by universities which are part of 6 European University Alliances: Universite Grenoble Alpes (Unite!), SGH (CIVICA), NHL Stenden (Run EU), Technical University of Cluj Napoca (EUt+), Universitat Würzburg (Charm EU), University of Torino (UNITA). A special, full member of the project team is Erasmus Student Network (ESN). Additionally, the project is supported by associated partners such as Franco-German University, Grenoble INP-UGA (Unite!) and ELTE (Charm EU)
The Warsaw edition of EUSAF opened with a welcome session featuring Professor Constance Chevallier-Govers, the EUC-VOICES Coordinator, and Ms. Katarzyna Aleksy, Director of the Higher Education Programmes Department at the Polish National Agency for Erasmus+ and European Solidarity Corps. She highlighted the recent Polish Presidency of the Council of the European Union (January–July 2025), underlining that the EU fully recognizes the importance of youth and places it at the centre of its priorities.
The programme of this year’s Forum was designed to be highly interactive, combining workshops, group work and open debates. Ambassadors took part in sessions such as From election to action: What it means to represent students, where they reflected on their own experiences as student representatives, mapping their roles, mandates, and challenges. Another workshop, How to organise activities on the local level, gave participants practical tools to plan, implement and evaluate student-led initiatives, leaving them with ready-to-use concepts for their university communities.
The second day continued with the theme of collaboration. In From representation to partnerships: Collaborating with stakeholders, ambassadors worked on strategies for building stronger cooperation with universities and student organisations, identifying key stakeholders and co-creating guiding principles. The programme concluded with an Open Space session, where participants proposed topics emerging from the Forum and discussed them in self-organised groups, ensuring that pressing issues and fresh ideas were addressed directly.
Alongside the workshops, the Forum included panel debates, networking opportunities, and a poster competition highlighting inspiring student initiatives from the alliances. A city game organised by ESN Warsaw added a unique local flavour to the event.
The second edition built on the work started in 2024. After the first EUSAF, a set of policy recommendations was already published, and these will now form an integral part of the final EUSAF Report on Student Engagement within and Across EUAs to be published at the end of the project in 2026. The report will map best practices, highlight examples of successful student initiatives, and propose concrete measures to strengthen student participation and identity across all alliances.
This year, 45 alliances were represented in Warsaw. In 2026, organisers hope to welcome ambassadors from all 65 alliances. Through initiatives such as EUSAF and CIVICA, SGH continues to play an important role in shaping the European Universities initiative, promoting collaboration and sharing expertise across alliances. The EUC-VOICES project runs until 2026 with funding from the Erasmus+ KA220-HED programme.
Pictures by Marcin Flis from SGH