Paris, April 16th 2005

Exactly twenty years ago today, in Paris, with a team of French students, I was welcoming 350 students coming from different countries of the European Community for the 1st 'Etats Généraux des Etudiants d'Europe'. During this congress the idea of AEGEE-Europe is born, and three months later, in Paris again, together with about 20 European students, we drafted the AEGEE-Europe status with the main features which are today still defining AEGEE-Europe's special touch: a generalist trans-European student movement, no national level, a European general assembly (Agora) and a European Comité Directeur (CD), a will to make Europe concrete by organizing a large scale process of European meetings and conferences … and of course a unique blend of serious talks and good fun!
You cannot remember because many of you were not born then, but this was a time with no European exchange programmes, no Internet, no high speed train, no low-cost airlines, much fewer highways, very expensive phone costs, and a fax machine was a rare high tech product for us! Still the network grew very fast and in a matter of a three years Aegee was already significantly present throughout the European Community (for more details you may now get online for free the book which tells it all "The emergence of Eurocitizens - an history of Aegee's first years"!).

Since then, a whole generation has passed. Scores of AEGEE members (about 200.000 in total since 1985) kept on building and developing what is still today the largest trans-European students network, present all over the European continent.
All along those 20 years, those students played a crucial role in anticipating/accompanying the European construction process : training future EU citizens to know better who are the other Europeans, allowing/supporting the existence of Erasmus and therefore the training of future EU elites in all kinds of fields, bridging the gap between Western and Eastern Europeans, pioneering the use of Internet in a trans-European context, exploring ways and means of partnership between the EU and its neighbours, … .
In many ways, and more than any other existing organization, AEGEE-Europe has been the instrument allowing younger generations to meet Europe by meeting the other Europeans! The idea became flesh! And in all senses of the term, because AEGEE did change the lives of thousands of those students through love affairs, friendships, weddings, professional careers which would have never occurred if not by AEGEE's sake. Some of you may indeed be the children of couples who met in an AEGEE congress about 20 years ago!

AEGEE-Europe was born in a time called "Eurosclerosis", when people where telling us "it will not work. People are not interested by Europe and your organization with no national level is impossible to run". Three years later AEGEE had become the youth's flagship of what became the renewal of the European construction, triggered by the "Europe without Borders" new vision of the European leaders of that time. And as you know very well, the very original structure of AEGEE is alive and well.

In coming years, the European project will be confronted with a major historic challenge: how to integrate 500 millions citizens from about 30 different nationalities, cultures and languages into the European political process? In other words, how to merge democratic aspirations with European integration? There is no existing solution coming from our European past, neither from other continents. Therefore we are facing the daunting task to invent such an answer. But I am very confident because I know that once again, thanks to you all now and tomorrow, AEGEE-Europe will bring its decisive contribution to the common good by generating new ideas, new methods and new visions allowing the European project to go once step further towards the 21st century trans-European democracy.

And I am already preparing my message for AEGEE's 40th anniversary in case your children would ask me to send one!

Franck Bianceri, founder of AEGEE-Europe

Franck Biancheri organised the conference in 1985 which led to the establishment of AEGEE-Europe. He remained president until 1988, when he was made the association's first honorary member.

Copyright © by AEGEE 20 All Right Reserved.

Published on: 2005-06-16 (152 reads)