In Autumn of 2003, FAIRE was organizing the ESIB (the soon to become ESU organisation) BM in Porto Santo. Student Unions from the Mediterranean were invited over a few days before the ESIB event in order to discuss possible cooperation within the Mediterranean region. Following various discussions a number of Unions, including FAIRE, KSU, POFNE soon to become POFEN), FAGE, CSC amongst others, signed a memorandum of understanding which stated that the unions in question would strive to create a Mediterranean Network of Student Representatives (MedNet) and would meet up in France to discuss and agree upon a statute.
In March 2004, 14 unions from 13 countries met up in Paris for a three day meeting. These Unions were UNEA (Algeria), SAFBiH (Bosnia and Herzegovina), SURS (Bosnia and Herzegovina), CSC (Croatia), POFEN (Cyprus), FAGE (France), NUIS (Israel), CEFA-UL (Lebanon), NSUM (Macedonia), KSU (Malta), FAIRE (Portugal), SUS (Serbia), SSU (Slovenia) and IBUSU (Turkey). KSU had taken care of drafting a first draft of the statute and the whole event was spent discussing the content of this statute and possible amendments. After hours and hours of discussion the MedNet statute was signed by all 14 Unions and MedNet was officially launched.
In June 2004, KSU hosted the first MedNet BM in Malta. The conference was mainly centered on perfecting the statute as well as creating a plan of work.
In October 2004, Faire organized the second MedNet BM in Lisbon, Portugal – the topic was “Mobility in the Mediterranean”.
In September 2005, CSC hosted the third MedNet BM in Croatia and in September 2006, POFEN hosted the fourth MedNet BM in Cyprus. The latter was the last meeting of MedNet until Fage organized a MedNet seminar in Lyon in June 2009. In April 2010 a MedNet meeting was hosted by NUIS in Israel.
In 2011, FAIRE organized the 6th BM of the Network during which the network’s structure went through a important overhaul. The network endowed itself with a permanent structure, a secretariat, designed to carry out the execution of the decisions. The network now meets every 6 month for its board meetings and conducts many capacity building seminars, training sessions and netowrking events.
Throughout its (approx) 9 year of existence, MedNet has helped strengthen the bonds between the unions involved, especially within the ESU framework.
MedNet 