Internationalization, free clickers for current and first-year students: these are two of the spearheads from the program of Groep-één. However, in the past few days both themes were also "promoted by a number of people from the ESR list as if they were specific ESR items", says the ESR on Wednesday in an online statement (in Dutch). Which is "not very nice", as Maaike Blok of Groep-één formulates it.

Campaign leader Eric Vroon of the ESR mentions “two incidents” involving two people from the list of candidates, which were raised halfway through Wednesday afternoon by Groep-één to Trees Klaver, chairwoman of the University Council. Thus, an international candidate of the ESR while campaigning allegedly referred to internationalization: a hobby horse of Groep-één.

Especially in her case this is not an illogical subject for discussion, as Vroon acknowledges - but nevertheless it is not in keeping with the gentlemen’s agreement that is traditionally drawn up by the University Council groups prior to the elections. That agreement specifies the spearheads which individual parties can broach during their campaigning work.

Maaike Blok of Groep-één says that she understands that internationalization will also be mentioned by the competitors. "It’s perfectly alright for the ESR to be in favor of internationalization. If we advocate good education, they are certainly not going to say that they are against that."

Still, Blok thinks that the international student of ESR should have indicated that that item would be dealt with by Groep-één this year. After all, there was a very good reason why Groep-één put its international candidate Danyal Haider at an electable fifth position on the party list, whereas the foreign student of the ESR is in position 26.

Blok is satisfied with the public apologies of the ESR. "It is a very appropriate reaction." In its online message the ESR emphasizes that whilst the parties may appear to be competitors at election time, “we are side by side during the year”.