A Brief History of the EUI

The idea of a ‘European Institute’ to complement the construction of Europe in the field of higher education was first advocated by the pro-European movements at the Hague Congress (May 1948), and the European Cultural Conference (December 1949).

The project only took shape at governmental level, however, during the ‘relaunch’ of Europe initiated by the Messina Conference (1955). Walter Hallstein, the German Secretary of State, promoted the idea of a ‘European University’ under the Euratom Treaty, as a training centre for nuclear sciences and a direct Community institution. The university was to be an instrument of integration, which would educate the élite of the new generations in a spirit far removed from the nationalisms of the past.

Despite determined action by the Italian government (Gaetano Martino, Amintore Fanfani), the European Commission’s interim committee chaired by Etienne Hirsch, and the European Parliament, all attempts to realise a ‘European University’ failed, mainly due to opposition from General de Gaulle and from national academic hierarchies.

The French government defended the ‘Europe des Patries’ and wished to avoid a university institution under Community law, to preserve state prerogatives in awarding degrees, and to rely on national centres of excellence with a ‘European vocation’ as suggested by Gaston Berger.

In particular, de Gaulle’s Fouchet Plan re-examined the question (Commission Pescatore) outside the framework of Euratom, focusing on cultural co-operation among ‘the Six’. European academics were reluctant to support the project for fear that it would lack the necessary cultural roots and drain off public funds.

It was thus in an inter-governmental framework that heads of state and government met in Bonn in July 1961. After an interruption caused by the ‘empty chair crisis’ and a second relaunch, sparked by the 1968 university crisis, the project was put back on the table at the Hague in December 1969, with a solemn resolve to fund a ‘European University Institute in Florence’.

The two conferences which followed in 1970/71 in Florence and Rome on the initiative of the Italian government produced a plan that was more modest in size and content. The University would no longer be a direct Community institution and would be reserved for post-graduate studies.

The difficult negotiations that followed led to a Convention  creating a ‘European University Institute’ signed by ‘the Six’ in 1972. In the meantime three new Member States (United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark), had applied to join the European University Institute and to participate in the work of its preparatory Committee.

The Institute’s mission was to ‘foster the advancement of learning in fields which are of particular interest for the development of Europe’. The EUI opened its doors to its first seventy researchers in November 1976.