Is this the world my younger self had imagined? No.
When I was fifteen, I spent three months in France on a student exchange. I remember believing that European countries would grow closer, that borders would fade – not only on maps, but in people’s minds.
At thirty, I witnessed the heydays of European integration – the Single Market, the Maastricht Treaty, enlargement. I believed in the possibility of a European constitution. I believed then, and still believe now, that the strength of European democracy rests on our capacity to work through our differences. That it is only through the slow labour of encounter and experiences of mutual translation that a shared political will can emerge.
This very idea is in the minds of millions of people who have studied abroad through the Erasmus program or who now live in a European country other than the one they were born in.
The idea of mutual translation – linguistic, cultural, political – is in the souls of the thousands of students and researchers who passed through the European University Institute. The EUI is a fruit and the pillar of the European project.
I take this moment to thank you all for being here – representatives of European institutions and governments, ministers and policymakers, members of the diplomatic corps, professors and colleagues, alumni, researchers and students, and friends of the Institute.
Your presence reflects what the EUI has become over fifty years: a place where Europe meets, thinks, and imagines.
I would also like to express our sincere gratitude to EU Institutions and all EUI Member States for their continuous support. A very special thanks goes to Italy – to Florence, Fiesole and the Tuscany region – for hosting the EUI, and in particular to the Italian Government for providing our remarkable premises, including the last extraordinary addition, Palazzo Buontalenti.
We are very grateful for the exceptional generosity of the Italian Authorities and their constant support over 50 years: not only financially, but also at the highest political level. Almost all the Presidents of the Italian Republic have visited the EUI, including Sandro Pertini, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, Giorgio Napolitano and Sergio Mattarella.
The EUI was created, as both a university and an intergovernmental organization, by the six founding members of the European community on the basis of a bold assumption: that Europe is not built through treaties alone, nor through markets, but through knowledge, culture, memory, through the capacity to think together across the lines that would otherwise divide us. Today, on this anniversary, I want to renew that commitment.
Our founding Convention calls on us to, I quote, “contribute, by its activities in the fields of higher education and research, to the development of Europe’s cultural and scientific heritage”, and to “engage (…) with the great movements and institutions” that have shaped its history, and will shape its future. Fifty years later, that mission has only grown more urgent – not because we have all the answers to our current problems, but because we remain one of the few European institutions that is dedicated to asking the questions that others, under the pressure of events or the comfort of conventions, no longer ask. In a world that rewards certainty and punishes doubt, that is not a modest contribution.
The exhibition OPEN, which we inaugurate tonight, reflects precisely this commitment. It is a space where scholars, artists, and citizens come together to explore questions that no single discipline, no single nation, no single generation can resolve alone.
In many ways, this is precisely what the EUI was created to do – and what it has done for fifty years. I am proud that these days of celebration will be the occasion to show it. And I think our accomplishments will speak for themselves. Perhaps there is no better example of this than EUIdeas, the new research festival launching tomorrow, where our scholars will engage with the defining questions of our time.
What do you think will universities look like in fifty years? And what will this mean for Europe?
This is a question we will take up this afternoon at our Ministerial Summit, and one we intend to pursue further with governments, institutions, and universities across Europe in the months to come through a structured debate.
At a time when artificial intelligence is transforming knowledge production, we are often told that universities will be reshaped beyond recognition. Perhaps they will be. But AI also offers an opportunity: by automating data collection, performance metrics and social media clicks, it gives us the chance to return to fundamentals: what does it mean to think, to learn, to understand?
Looking beyond metrics and performance, experience remains. And that cannot be mechanised. The creation of self and the world through the practical experience of thought, in dialogue with other thoughts. It is the university as a shared environment where ideas can be tested, and pursued, where learning is an effort that transforms those involved, and where disagreement does not lead to exclusion, but where doubt is what we most deeply share.
To come back to the question Corrado, the little boy in the video, asks – the world and Europe have not turned out as I had imagined, back in the heydays of European integration. When progress, the European way, was a glittering road ahead. But I am not here to mourn it. I am here because what counts now is our ability to act in the present, and to shape what comes next.
I will not offer yet another inventory of contemporary crises. You know them. Instead, I want to name something less visible but more consequential: a social, cultural, somehow even moral malaise at the heart of the European project. That the very idea of a shared future seems to elude our grasp.
We cannot ignore the growing sense across the continent, that somewhere along the way we have become adept at treating symptoms, while leaving the underlying questions unasked. Competitiveness and digital innovation, yes. But for what purpose, and for whom? What kind of life are we seeking to make possible?
We have developed a routinised management of crises, quick fixes, technical responses to questions that were never purely technical. Too often we prefer to speak the language of targets and deliverables, rather than the language of care and purpose.
Aren’t we here rather to imagine desirable futures and make them real?
Let’s take the example of energy. Energy is about security, environmental protection, competitiveness and social justice. Energy highlights both Europe’s strength and the weakness. Europe is a leader in technical and social energy innovation. But its fragmented policies and jurisdiction jeopardize industry returns and threatens the collective security of energy supply, and security more broadly. There is a gap between the rhetoric of ideals and the capacity to translate them into practical benefits for European citizens and enterprises. An urgent need not only for coordinated action but for imagination, the capacity to conceive a different energy system, bringing together all relevant sectors and decision-making levels.
Europe is no longer a project under construction. Many understand, perhaps more clearly than before, why Europe matters: for security, for prosperity, for democracy. According to the Eurobarometer, three out of four Europeans feel they are citizens of the Union. Seven in ten find that the European Union is a place of stability in a troubled world. The desire for Europe is stronger than it has been in decades.
Europe, as a form of life, is resilient. It is not a policy that can be reversed. In the current climate of anxiety and crisis, this is something to hold onto. And if we are tempted to take it for granted, we only need to look beyond our borders – to the young Ukrainians, Georgians, Moldovans, who remind us to what Europe represents. They see, perhaps more clearly than we do, what is at stake – and what we risk losing.
Let me recall a voice that speaks to this, and that is inspiring me.
I quote “Without exaggerating, and without portraying Europe as a besieged citadel, we must demonstrate to our fellow citizens every day that the European project, through the pooling of our resources, is essential if we are to survive and safeguard our independence.”
And it goes on: “We will be all the better placed to establish peaceful and balanced relations with other nations around the world and to strengthen our solidarity – if we will have managed to prove our determination.”
These words were spoken by Simone Veil, the first woman president of the European Parliament, at the EUI back in 1980.
She warned against a Europe perceived as “an almost exclusively economic organisation, managed by technocrats”. And she called for a “second wind”.
The second wind Simone Veil called for requires intellectual grounding, social imagination, and the self-confidence to ask difficult questions. Because before we can act, we must see clearly. And before we can see clearly, we must find the courage to name what holds us back.
We need sharper lenses – to capture the complexity of the world we inhabit.
What would strategic autonomy mean for Europe? Jean Monnet understood in the 1950s that coal and steel were not just economic resources, but drivers of political transformation. Whoever controlled them, shaped the continent.
Today, similar questions arise. Strategic autonomy is not a flag. It is a mesh, a system of decisions, institutions, technologies, and skills, where any weak link exposes the whole.
Digital infrastructure has become our coal and steel, the backbone of our democratic life. The question is whether Europe can govern itself on its own terms, or whether it will leave the core infrastructure where citizens deliberate and younger generations interact under the control of others. Much of our knowledge, data, and security information is currently stored and managed by large platforms beyond Europe. At the EUI, we are working to imagine alternatives, including the development of the first truly European social media platform.
But we also know that meeting Europe’s technology and security ambitions will require far greater resources. By 2030, the investment gap is estimated at 750-800 billion euros each year. If Europe is to stand on its own feet, it must be able to mobilise its own resources.
These challenges are complex, and they cannot be addressed by policy alone.
The EUI today is a necessity, a place where Europe can reflect upon itself and begin to imagine desirable futures – together with institutions and society at large.
In the official inauguration of 1976, the first president of the EUI, Max Kohnstamm, spoke of three crises: the crisis of the European Community, the crisis of universities, and the crisis of civilisation. I quote: “Certainly, with our own feeble forces we cannot answer them. But if we do not run away from these questions, do not bury our heads in the sand, we may perhaps help in discovering and developing modes of thoughts and action appropriate to our age and its problems”.
This remains the foundation on which we must build the future of the EUI. Let us be ambitious, not for ourselves but for the younger generations who, like Corrado in the video, are already watching us. Tomorrow our doctoral researchers and master students will close the celebrations by taking us on a journey to 2076. Inviting us to share our hopes for the EUI, and for Europe.
Because we will be called to testify in history’s court. Fifty years from now, the youngest among us and those yet to come, those who will pass through the EUI and those who will shape Europe beyond it, will look back and be the judges of our actions. And they will ask: Who were you? What did you build for us? What did you leave behind?
These questions are already upon us.
Let’s ensure that the EUI remains what it was meant to be: a place
where Europe reflects upon itself in its full depth: as an excellent research university, as a social space of possibility, as a diplomatic force grounded in principle, and as a shared act of imagination.
The EUI has come a long way in 50 years and there is much more to come. A happy 50th anniversary to all of you in our large EUI family!