An anniversary conference in Brussels, a large Alumni weekend in Nice: 2024 was a special, historic year for CIFE, as we celebrated our 70th anniversary.

It was in Autumn 1954 when the French intellectual Alexandre Marc founded the “Centre international de formation européenne”, after the failure of the European Defence Community had caused much frustration among the supporters of European unification. The objective of the newly founded institution was to prepare Europe’s future by educating young citizens espousing the cause of a united continent.

We celebrated our anniversary first with a large alumni reunion in September in Nice, and then with an Anniversary Conference assembling distinguished academic experts, stakeholders, partners and former students, now working in Brussels and other capitals. Our President Herman Van Rompuy and the Director-General for Education, Youth and Sport, Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen, gave us the honour of delivering keynote speeches. We concluded our conference with a famous line from one of the founding fathers of European integration, Jean Monnet: “Nothing is possible without men, nothing is enduring without institutions”.

“Nothing is enduring without institutions” – rarely has a sentence been truer than today, at a time when democratic institutions are under pressure and heavily attacked as seldom before. In times like these, institutions must prove their resilience, but they also need our support and commitment. Only in this way can we preserve the achievements that we call ours and that have so far protected us from repeating the mistakes of Europe’s past. Let us remain vigilant before it is too late.

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