Union nationale des étudiants de France
| UNEF | |
|---|---|
| Founding year: | 1907 |
| President: |
William Martinet |
| Address: | 112 boulevard de la Villette 75019 Paris |
| Website: | unef.fr |
The Union nationale des étudiants de France (UNEF) is France 's largest and oldest student association .
The organization represents the interests of the student body vis-à-vis national and local legislation and government, political parties, state bodies dealing with higher education and university administrations. The association is also active internationally, especially within the European Students' Union (ESU).
history
The UNEF was founded in Lille in 1907 as a voluntary umbrella organization of several French university groups ( Associations Générales d'Étudiants , AGE). These had been created since the 1870s (e.g. Nancy 1877, Lille 1881, Paris 1884, Montpellier 1889). In the years after the First World War, the UNEF was particularly committed to international understanding (founding member of the Confédération internationale des étudiants ) and to the social concerns of its members (1933 opening of its own TB sanatorium in Saint-Hilaire-du-Touvet, 1936 Founding of the “Comité supérieur des œuvres en faveur des étudiants”, comparable to the German student unions ). On May 29, 1929, the umbrella organization was officially recognized by regulation.
In the Charte de Grenoble , adopted in 1946, the UNEF described the student as an "intellectual worker" and himself as part of the labor and trade union movement. The trade union syndicalism , which provided for workers to take over industrial plants through direct action , provided the model.
Until then, the goals of the UNEF were purely economic. The student studies in the interest of society and is therefore entitled to a student salary. The demand was later taken up by the SDS in Germany . In 1948, under pressure from the UNEF, a student social insurance scheme (Mutuelle nationale des étudiants de France, MNEF, since 2000 La Mutuelle Des Etudiants , LMDE) was founded.
The UNEF was not politically active until 1957. The Algerian war changed this. In the 1950s UNEF supported the independence movement in Algeria and was then reprimanded by the government (blocking public grants). As a result, a right wing split off for the first time in 1962 and spoke out against political activities.
In 1967 the PSU was the left-most party in France. The leading officials of the UNEF were PSU members. During the May 1968 riots in Paris , a Trotskyist group, the Revolutionary Communist Student Union (JCR) , provided and organized the UNEF's security service. Without him, the number of dead and injured would undoubtedly have been higher. Their moderate stance led the UNEF to oppose the March 22nd Movement . At the height of the student rebellion, 30,000 to 50,000 students met for the UNEF congress in the Stade Sebastien Charlety in Paris. As a result, the UNEF broke up in 1971 into several rival organizations, each dominated by or related to different political parties. It was not until 2001 that the two most important wings - UNEF-SE ( Solidarité Étudiante ) and UNEF-ID ( Indépendante et Démocratique ) - were reunited under the old name UNEF.
In 2006, the UNEF, under its President Bruno Julliard, played a leading role in the student protests against Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin's Labor Law Contrat première embauche (CPE).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Emil-Maria Claassen, Louis-Ferdinand Peters: Rebellion in France , Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, Munich 1968, chapter: Die Französische Studentenunion UNEF (Head: Jacques Sauvageot) , pp. 56-61