Collecting Memories: European Parliament 1979-2019

The European Parliament, directly elected in 1979, is approaching its 40^th anniversary, which will coincide with the elections in May/June 2019 for its 9^th term.

The project “Collecting memories: European Parliament 1979 – 2019” aims to provide an assessment of what the European Parliament has and has not achieved since 1979.To set this assessment in motion, the project is collecting memories, written and oral, from MEPs who worked inside the institution during that period. The aim is to publish the results during the first semester of 2019, and thus to mark the 40th anniversary of the first direct elections to the European Parliament.

The project is conducted by Alfredo De Feo, Francis Jacobs, Gerard Laprat, Dietmar Nickel and Michael Shackleton; all former staff of the European Parliament where they spent a large part of the last forty years. So far 100 MEPs have agreed to participate in this project.

The oral interviews produced, as well as their summaries, will be deposited in the Oral History Section of the Historical Archives of the European Union and made available to researchers.

Representatives of the HAEU, the Former Members Association of the European Parliament and the University of Maastricht (Christine Neuhold) will provide support to the project.

The HAEU and FMA will organize a celebration to mark the 40^th anniversary of the direct elections of the European Parliament and the publication of the results of this research project.