The Diplomat
The Council of Ministers approved last Tuesday a voluntary contribution of 20,000 euros to the College of Europe, the oldest European studies center in the world.
The College of Europe is a non-profit association of public utility, whose mission is to train postgraduates from all over Europe, who are trained to work for the construction of Europe, both in political institutions and in the private sector. As a member country of the European Union, Spain is a member of the Board of Directors of the College of Europe through the figure of its permanent ambassador representative to the European Union. Spanish politician Íñigo Méndez de Vigo was president of the Board of Trustees for ten years, between 2009 and 2019.
Among the functions of the Governing Board is to agree on the annual budget of the College of Europe and to set the contributions that correspond to each member state. The College of Europe, through the Permanent Representation of Spain to the European Union, requested last March 30 the payment of 20,000 euros as the Spanish contribution for the year 2024, which was finally approved by the Council of Ministers.
The school, created in 1949 on the initiative, among others, of the Spanish thinker Salvador de Madariaga, has two campuses in Bruges (Belgium), founded in 1949, and in the Natolin Palace in Warsaw (Poland), established in 1992. In addition, the College of Europe has one of the best and most complete libraries of European studies in the world and a research department that collaborates with the European Commission and other international organizations on issues related to EU law.
Each year, 450 students from more than 50 countries are trained at this institution after going through a complex selection process that is coordinated between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of each country. To this end, the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs offers scholarships every year to study at this center.
Many of the current diplomats, ambassadors, politicians and officials of the European Union have studied their postgraduate studies at the College of Europe. Among the Spaniards are the former vice-president of the European Commission and former president of the Congress of Deputies Manuel Marín; the diplomat José Joaquín Puig de la Bellacasa, former undersecretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former secretary general of the King’s Household; or Pelayo Castro Zuzuárregui, current head of division for Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan in the European External Action Service (EEAS).
The current rector of the College of Europe is the former EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, the Italian Federica Mogherini, and the president of the Governing Board is, since 2019 (when he replaced the Spanish Méndez de Vigo), the Belgian Herman van Rompuy, first permanent president of the European Council between 2009 and 2014.
