European Student Think Tank

The European Stu­dent Think Tank is an inter­na­tional think tank made up of European stu­dents from dif­fer­ent dis­cip­lin­ary back­grounds. The EST comes up with policy vis­ions for the European Union. The EST is a Pan-European organisation.

What are the EST’s main goals?

As a think tank, the primary aim of the EST is to for­mu­late high qual­ity advise on EU policy from the point of view of its stu­dent pop­u­la­tion. The con­tem­por­ary polit­ical cli­mate or par­tic­u­lar national interests should not com­prom­ise this advice. The EST aims to have an impact on European pub­lic opin­ion and policy making.

Secondly, the EST aims to stim­u­late the pub­lic debate among stu­dents. By facil­it­at­ing cross-culture debates, the EST helps stu­dents to get famil­iar with other cul­tures, per­cep­tions and ideas that are form the con­tin­ent of Europe. In this way the EST provides a valu­able addi­tion to any aca­demic career and pre­pares stu­dents for a pro­fes­sional career.

Thirdly, by offer­ing a pos­sib­il­ity to engage with European decision mak­ing, EST aims on con­trib­ut­ing to over­come or at least decrease the demo­cratic defi­cit the EU is said to have. We intend to bridge the gab between Brus­sels and the European cit­izen, by cre­at­ing oppor­tun­it­ies to learn about European policy and lower­ing the threshold to act­ively engage with it.

What does the EST do?

The EST activ­it­ies can be cat­egor­ized into three dif­fer­ent stages: col­lect­ing input, cre­at­ing out­put, and dissemination.

1. Col­lect­ing input

The EST aims to col­lect a broad range of ideas and opin­ions. The whole stu­dent pop­u­la­tion of Europe, includ­ing that of EU can­did­ate states, is invited to con­trib­ute to our plat­form of ideas on the EU. The input can be about any topic con­cern­ing the EU and is in no way lim­ited to those issues that dir­ectly affect stu­dents. Any stu­dent is wel­come to write a blog or an in-depth art­icle, organ­ize a debate, or con­trib­ute in any other form. Res­ults from the input activ­it­ies are col­lec­ted and presen­ted on the web­site to stim­u­late fur­ther dis­cus­sion. We may use the con­tent of art­icles for more events open to a wide pub­lic. The ideas we col­lect by invit­ing all stu­dents to con­trib­ute form the basis for intens­i­fied ana­lysis of the most urgent policy issues. Through this phase, we hear what is actu­ally import­ant to EU stu­dents. We can fur­ther built the EST activ­it­ies on that inform­a­tion. The follow-up on the broad dis­cus­sion on the EST web­site will take place dur­ing the policy gen­er­a­tion events and are part of the out­put activities.

2. Cre­at­ing output

This stage entails all activ­it­ies that aim at in-depth ana­lysis of the prob­lems at stake. As men­tioned above, the opin­ions and vis­ions col­lec­ted dur­ing the input activ­it­ies serve as a start­ing point for out­put activ­it­ies. Dur­ing intens­ive meet­ings European stu­dents trans­form a broad range of vis­ions into one policy strategy. In other words, dur­ing the out­put activ­it­ies stu­dents gen­er­ate policy advice. This can be presen­ted in any form. The activ­it­ies aimed at cre­at­ing out­put are open to a select group of stu­dents. These stu­dents meet for a period of time while they dis­cuss, elab­or­ate, and even­tu­ally come up with an extens­ive pro­posal on policy strategy policy makers and politi­cians should fol­low. We will select stu­dents for this phase on the basis of gen­eral motiv­a­tion, aca­demic achieve­ment in the broad­est sense (e.g. one great pub­lic­a­tion may weigh higher than over­all GPA), abil­ity to think out­side the box, and know­ledge on the EU. The groups are formed on the basis of diversity in dis­cip­lin­ary back­ground, a bal­ance between Bach­elor and Mas­ter stu­dents, and a rep­res­ent­a­tion of sev­eral the­or­et­ical and polit­ical views.

3. Dis­sem­in­a­tion

One of the EST’s main goals is to stim­u­late the debate about European polit­ics and European policy mak­ing. The EST can con­trib­ute to this debate by spread­ing its vis­ions and in-depth ana­lysis of issues that are cre­ated dur­ing the out­put stage. These well-researched ideas are the EST’s key instru­ment in the dis­sem­in­a­tion pro­cess. Since the EST aims to stim­u­late the pub­lic debate about European polit­ics among stu­dents, the dis­sem­in­a­tion activ­it­ies all have to raise aware­ness for vis­ions of the EU among the gen­eral pub­lic. Dur­ing the dis­sem­in­a­tion stage the organ­isa­tion there­fore addresses the gen­eral pub­lic, rather than solely bur­eau­crats or politi­cians. In par­tic­u­lar, the EST tries to influ­ence the pub­lic opin­ion by pro­mot­ing the EST vis­ions to key play­ers in the debate, i.e. journ­al­ists and aca­dem­ics. As politi­cians and policy-makers are influ­enced by the pub­lic opin­ion we hope to reach a knock-on effect.

The EST products can take any form, but should aim to advise which policy dir­ec­tion the EU needs to fol­low in order to achieve a par­tic­u­lar out­come. The EST indic­ates what policy-makers and politi­cians should aim for. So, the EST not only iden­ti­fies even­tual goals of the EU, but at the same time gives a gen­eral over­view of the strategy the EU could fol­low in order to achieve that goal. EST policy pro­pos­als have a broad, ideal­istic, and long-term character.

Who make up the EST?

Ambi­tious, cre­at­ive, and bright stu­dents from the EU are con­nec­ted through the EST. Their energy will be com­bined to cre­ate ideas that will dir­ect the EU to a bet­ter future they fore­see. These stu­dents can have a broad range of back­grounds and cooper­a­tion between Mas­ter and Bach­elor stu­dents from both multi-disciplinary as spe­cial­ized stud­ies is strongly encour­aged. The EST demands that all stu­dents involved have suf­fi­cient aca­demic skills, a very good com­mand of the Eng­lish lan­guage, and a demon­strable interest in EU affairs. This EU-wide stu­dent cooper­a­tion is the basis for all primary activ­it­ies. The EST stu­dent com­munity is act­ively involved in accom­plish­ing the main EST object­ives. The inter­na­tional cooper­a­tion between stu­dents is of great value for the devel­op­ment of smart, cre­at­ive, and bal­anced policy recom­mend­a­tions. How­ever, due to logistic factors the offices of the organ­isa­tion might be based in just a couple of countries.

Qual­ity

The EST dis­tin­guishes itself by set­ting ambi­tious goals and cher­ish­ing the high stand­ards required to be a cred­ible think tank. While being access­ible and wide­spread, this should never inter­fere with high-level aca­demic research and qual­ity out­put. As a con­sequence, the selec­tion of con­trib­ut­ors is strict. Main­tain­ing a net­work of stu­dents through­out Europe is an essen­tial part of the EST for it cre­ates a proper transna­tional com­munity that rep­res­ents the diversity of the EU mem­ber states best. How­ever, the EST focuses on qual­ity out­put, rather than being the largest European (stu­dent) com­munity on EU policy.