Conflicting Visions of Europeanised Higher Education, 1958–61

Abstract

May 1958 marked the start of a new sequence of events in the history of the European University. This was the date at which the institutions of the new European Communities first discussed Articles 9(2) and 216 of the European Atomic Energy Community Treaty — the duty of the atomic energy community to create a university institution. The two Treaties of Rome had come into operation in January 1958, the one to establish the European Economic Community (EEC), the other the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). While the establishment of the Communities is seen with hindsight as marking the most ambitious act of peaceful integration ever seen on the European continent, the higher education issue has been a forgotten footnote — Jean-Marie Palayret’s archive-based account of the pre-history of the European University Institute is the major exception.¹ The Euratom treaty provision for a supranational university institution was never implemented. This chapter tells us why.