>> History of AEGEE-Europe

1985-88: The Beginning

16 April 1985 is recorded as the birthday of AEGEE. On this day a huge conference was opened in Paris, called "EGEE", aiming at overcoming the ongoing Eurosclerosis, the paralysation of the European integration process. Under leadership of Franck Biancheri, the five Grand Ecoles in the French capital organised this event, creating a platform for 700 young Europeans from all European Community countries. The name EGEE (Etats Généraux des Etudiants de l'Europe) was related to the Aegean Sea - la Mer Egée - where democracy was created 2,000 years ago. Due to a name collision with a French company, the name was changed to AEGEE in 1988. It is pronounced as if it was a French word "aégée".

EGEE wanted to be a plat-form for young Europeans to discuss the future of Europe, to present their ideas to the officials of the EC insti-tutions and national governments. The participating students also wanted to influence European policy in favour of students. They became enthusiastic and established local branches in their cities, thus creating a network. Starting in Paris, the association was soon present in Munich, Milan, Leiden, London and Madrid. In 1988, AEGEE was already established in 40 university cities. In this year AEGEE, which was totally focusing on EC member states, opened up to the EFTA countries. An opening to students on the other side of the Iron Curtain was not possible.

In this early period AEGEE's biggest political success took place - the association successfully lobbied for the implementation of the Erasmus Mobility Scheme after a dinner with Francois Mitterand on 15th March 1987. Impressive was also a satellite link of seven cities in 1986 - which caused bankruptcy for AEGEE-Bruxelles, however. Moreover, AEGEE showed big projects to the outside world: Euromanagers, Europolice, Moot Court, Euro Stage, and the Summer University Project.

Today, nearly all of these initiatives work independently, in their professional demand they grew too strong for a voluntary association. Especially the loss of Euromanagers (EMDS) hurts - the founders made a contract with AEGEE that guaranteed that AEGEE should get half of the seats in the executive board of EMDS. However, whereas EMDS, which has a yearly turnover of several million Euro, claim not to remember the agreement, AEGEE lost its copy of the contract. Only the Summer University Project, introduced in 1988 with 11 courses and now reaching nearly 100, still remain part of AEGEE's activities.

Already at the first AGORA in Munich, April 1986, the structure of the association was created, com-posed by the AGORA, Presidents' Meeting (since 2001 Planning Meeting), Comité Directeur and Working Groups. The Network Commission was established only at the AGORA in Athens, November 1996.

However, after three years of presidency of Frank Biancheri, a period of stagnation came, as his successors could not add anything new to the existing idea or transfer the goal of AEGEE. The internal trouble started after the short presidency of Vieri Bracco from Milan, who vanished to Brazil two months after his election in 1988. In the same year the French locals left AEGEE, forming an own association under the name Artemis. The newly founded French branches could never re-establish in their old strength again.


1989-95: Embracing the East

Europe changed, the Iron Curtain was disappear-ing, and new per-spectives were opened. However, the Comité Directeur somehow could not or was not willing to realise this development. Franck Biancheri saw the association as a lobby club at the European Community and feared that AEGEE would lose its influence by loosening the ties. Nevertheless, on the day the Berlin Wall crumbled in 1989, the AGORA in Salerno decided to open up to interested students in Central and Eastern Europe. The East-West Working Group started their actions to establish AEGEE locals there - although the CD was observing these activities very reluctantly.

In this time, more and more locals regarded the structure of AEGEE as not very democratic. As EGEE was founded, it had a CD (Comité Directeur) of 20 full members and 10 suppléants - few of those were actually working and were elected as a list. The number was reduced to 16 at the Salerno Agora. Many AEGEE locals wanted to have a better communication within the network and wanted to reduce the distance between the locals and CD. All these reasons helped to establish the "Quo Vadis" opposition list under Georg von der Gablentz. This opposition list was elected at the AGORA in Bonn, in November 1990.

The new CD had only few links to the old one. Most people of the old generation refused to co-operate. AEGEE lost most of its files, since there was no office, where the whole CD worked and lived - so the CD members had most files at their homes. AEGEE-Europe had basically to start from scratch. At least the new CD had a huge support of the network. Georg von der Gablentz stayed president until 1992 - the second longest term after Franck Biancheri's. At the AGORA in Amsterdam, April 1991, the election system was changed. Since that time, the CD members are elected separately and are individually responsible for their moral reports.

AEGEE-Europe then supported the development in Central and Eastern Europe, especially by transferring major events to Eastern Europe like the AGORAs in Budapest (November 1991) and Praha (April 1993) and the Presidents' Meeting in Kraków (March 1992). The extensive growth of the network in the East changed the character of the network and the understanding of Europe of all members. This network growth in the East still continues - and most creative ideas are actually born in these locals where the idea of a unified Europe is a very strong vision, whereas the West became less active.

During 1993 at the European School in Valladolid an attempt was made to revive the idealistic AEGEE, with the motto “Mobility with a purpose”. The idea was to include all basic ideas of AEGEE into a common goal that everybody could work together for. For this co-ordination of AEGEE activities the introduction of the Yearplan, masterminded by CD member Philipp von Klitzing, was an important step.

On CD level, these times were restless. Between 1993 and 2001 not a single president stayed in office for more than six months. Another drawback was the fact that basically only the so-called "daily board" of president, treasurer and secretary were working in the AEGEE-Europe office, which was nothing else than one room, hosted by the University of Delft. Most of the other CD members - at that time a CD was composed out of 16 people - lived at home. E-mail was not common among CD members, so a proper work according to today's standard was not possible.

A typical example for the results of miscommunication and lack of co-ordination of a very fast growing association was the 10th anniversary of AEGEE in 1995, which was masterminded under the presidency of Dorian Selz the year before. Despite nice PR successes with a reception at the European Commission, the 10th anniversary festival in Antalya flopped - with having about 70 participants instead of the foreseen 500. Even bigger was the scandal around the 10th Anniversary Book, where one member of the co-ordination asked a designer to layout the book - who charged 10.000 Euro for his service.

1996-99: Growing Professionalism in Brussels

The growing network, the rising number of external contacts in Brussels, the increasing workload for the CD and the growing lack of control all shouted for a stronger administration. This coincided with the fact that the University of Delft did not want to host AEGEE-Europe anymore, mainly due to the high phone bill, which was covered by the university. The head office had to move by 31st December 1995. The AGORA in Budapest in November 1995 decided to move the head office to Brussels, the leaving CD of president Egens van Iterson Scholten found a house in the Belgian capital, which had office space to work and rooms to live. However, the first office in Brussels in Saint Peter Street was a messy place, a former shop. The CD members had to live either in the dark cellar or in some small and poorly renovated rooms on the top floor. The stairs smelled foul.

In July 1996 the CD discovered that the finances were out of control. The benefits of the University of Delft were gone, plus the CD discovered severe calculation mistakes in the budgets and financial reports before. With reserves of only 16.000 Euro, the CD knew it had to move to a different place, otherwise AEGEE-Europe would be bankrupt soon. In autumn 1996 everything was moved to Rue del'Orme 10, Brussels-Etterbeek. Still, in December 1998 AEGEE-Europe had to move again, to its current location in rue Nestor de Tière 15, Brussels-Schaerbeek, because the owner wanted to use the house in a different way. Next to its perfect office and living conditions the most special feature is a bunch of chicken that live in the garden - AEGEE inherited them by signing the rent contract.

Constantly the working conditions were improved. In the old office in January 1996 AEGEE had two old computers. In the new office nearly every CD member got his own PC. In general IT was becoming very important, and the fact that many technology students are in the network resulted in AEGEE-Europe being a frontrunner in modern technologies. Already in 1994, the year when Netscape was invented, AEGEE-Europe had its first homepage. In March 1997 AEGEE registered its own Internet domain, aegee.org. In the same year Lotus Notes was introduced to administer the databases of the network.

In this period the reform of AEGEE-Europe with its move to Brussels was completed with structural reforms at the AGORA in Athens, November 1996. The number of CD members was reduced to nine, which were basically obliged to spend most time in Brussels. At the same assembly the Network Commission was introduced, dividing the network in ten regions and assisting the locals in all matters. This step helped decreasing the "ivory tower" effect of a smaller CD living far away from the network.

In Brussels, being closer to the European institutions, the European board was able to focus stronger on PR and European-wide thematic projects with 10 to 20 congresses, seminars and other actions. In 1996, the event cycle "Find Your Way" educated a few hundred youth NGO leaders. Also in January 1996, AEGEE was invited in a round-table talk on the Euro currency in Brussels - as a result of this, 1997's "Europe & Euro" project raised awareness concerning the new European currency. In 1999 the "Peace Academy" promoted tolerance and understanding in more than 20 European-wide events, co-ordinated mainly by students in Turkey and Greece. Also developed were actions as the "Day of Europe" and the "Socrates Action Day" where 50 or more antennae organised actions on the same day.

Especially the CDs of the presidents Gerhard Kreß and Peter Ginser in 1996/97 created or administered these big projects, which also got AEGEE's finances back on track and had an effect until the late 90ies. Perfect structures and perfect CD are not the same pair of shoes. However, and after Peter Ginser finished his term at the AGORA in Ankara, November 1997, 18 dark months started for the association. The three presidents Sergio Caredda, Hélène Berard and in first case Stefan Seidel proved either to be incapable or too arrogant to lead the association in a proper way. The Moral Reports of these three CDs were all rejected by the Agora.

A growing opposition in the network resulted in a highly successful new reform CD, elected at the AGORA in Barcelona, May 1999. New president became László Fésüs from Szeged, who gathered probably the most experienced and oldest CD of the past decade around himself, with members such as his successor Faní Zarifopoulou, Aliki Louvrou, Bernhard Müller and Marcus Khoury - hardly anyone of these student leaders was still a student then. The opposition preparations for overhauling the CD had mounted at the European School in Gießen in April 1999. This event was a turning point in a double sense: it also triggered the foundation of the AEGEE-Academy at the AGORA on Barcelona. This Human Resources Working Group gave a high stress to training events in AEGEE, highly sharpening the profile of AEGEE in this respect.

Thematically, AEGEE continued the strong focus on South East Europe. In 2000, new projects were born, such as "Education for Democracy". AEGEE started this successful scholarship programme, which enabled students from war-shattered Kosovo to study at Western European universities. The Peace Academy was concluded with a Peace Summit at the Aegean Sea, developing concepts for conflict resolution in Europe. The Borderless Europe Rally, heart of the "Borderless Europe" project, saw an Interrail race of several multi-cultural teams across the continent, conflicting them with different European realities. Moreover, AEGEE students took a firm standing in political issues: members of AEGEE-Beograd were standing in the first row when the Milosevic dictatorship was defeated in autumn 2000; and two months later AEGEE presented itself at the Nice EU summit - giving its input for the future Europe.

In 2001, again huge projects dominated the association. "Quo Vadis Europe" and the "European Day of Languages" combined the positive effects of strong network activation and good PR to the outside world. These projects were carried out under the presidency of Karina Häuslmeier from Passau, the first president since 1993 who stayed one year. In this time the strong network growth of the previous years continued - echoed by a new record of events: more than 90 Summer Universities, about 150 events took place in 2001. The network has currently 256 branches and continues its growth, shifting the stress of the association more and more to the South and East of the network.

Both under Karina Häuslmeier’s and her predecessor Oana Mailatescu’s Presidencies, a new focus was set on long-tern planning and continuous evaluation, with tools such as the Main Fields of Action and the Strategy Plan, which define the areas where the association gives more input during one year, and the way AEGEE-Europe as a whole is planned to develop in 4-year periods, respectively.
After all these changes, AEGEE looks as healthy as ever, ready to be part of the 21st century history as it was in the 20th.

2000-2005: Supporting the EU Enlargement and democratisation in the East

In 2000 - 2002, new successful projects are born: Education for Democracy; Eureca, a contribution to the design of a new education programme for the enlarging European Union. New tools are introduced - the Main Fields of Action and the Strategy Plan, which respectively
define the main foci of AEGEE’s activities, and the work and development of AEGEE-Europe as a whole over a four-year period.

AEGEE decides to expand its activities beyond the traditional borders of Europe, introducing the Europe in the World year plan topic, organising the Caucasus Case Study Trip in August 2003 and the World Youth Summit on Globalisation at the European Parliament in Brussels.

Significant network growth has continued into the first years of the new millennium. Our 241 local branches organised 135 conferences and seminars and 99 Summer Universities in 2004. Two focuses in particular became obvious: AEGEE successfully offered its 15 year old experience in bridging East and West in the environment of the EU enlargement in 2004, for instance within the framework of the Yearplan Project “EU and Europe”. The other focus regards conflict resolution in war-struck Balkan and initiatives to strengthen democracy and reconciliation in countries such as Ukraine and Cyprus. This was reflected by new projects which consisted of “Education for Democracy". However, AEGEE members do not just talk about the problematic “Hotspots” – within the Yearplan project in 2005. Members of AEGEE were in the frontline during the demonstrations in Ukraine against the election fraud in December 2004, AEGEE took a firm stand for democracy as well as in the summer in Albania and keep on continuing its activities in this field.

In 2005 the main focus of the AEGEE member is the 20th Anniversary of the Association. Series of conferences, celebrations are organised all around Europe, not to mention the biggest Gala event ever to be organised in Praha, in September 2005.