Europe Day, 9 May, is the 75^th anniversary of the Schuman Declaration, a daring document that is now considered the taproot of the European Union. Ever since 1985, 9 May has been celebrated as Europe Day. The Declaration was exceptionally short: the English version is under a thousand words. But its message was revolutionary from the iconic first line:  “World peace cannot be safeguarded without the making of creative efforts proportionate to the dangers which threaten it.”

“There was this fundamental belief”, says Pilvi Torsti, ETF’s Director, “that economic collaboration was the sustainable mechanism for cooperation and, hence, peace.” The Declaration grew out of various documents in the preceding years. The Ventotene Manifesto, written in June 1941, was penned by three Italians and adopted as the programme of the European Federalist Movement two years later. In Algiers, in 1944, the Resistance’s Combat Network adopted the Revolutionary Charter of Free Men, deriding “illusory sovereignty” and urging a “march towards unity”.

It’s notable that one of the deepest legacies of Schuman and his colleagues is in the area of education. CERS provides educational tools to teach the history, challenges and possible futures of Europe, offering training to almost 5,000 students and 1,200 teacher-trainees. Torsti sees Schuman’s mission blossoming through education.  “I think it’s very interesting to recognise”, she says, “that whenever the EU has taken steps in the field of education and learning, it has become very popular. It has become so commonplace to study for parts of your degree in another country that if you talk to someone born after the 1970s, they don’t even know that the Erasmus exchange hasn’t always been there.”

There are other overlaps between Schuman’s vision and that of the ETF. Schuman perceived that Europe had to be far wider than a Franco-German alliance: he looked East (roundly condemning the USSR’s repression in Budapest in October-November 1956) and he spoke of enabling “the development of the African continent”. With the ETF working in education well beyond the EU’s borders, its affinities with Schuman and the CERS are deep.