The European University Institute (EUI) is an intergovernmental postgraduate and post-doctoral research institute in the social sciences and humanities, based at Fiesole in the hills above Florence, Italy. It was created by a convention signed in Florence on 19 April 1972 by the six founding member states of the European Communities, and admitted its first researchers in 1976.
The EUI is an international organisation with its own juridical personality, established by treaty between states rather than by the founding treaties of the European Union. It is not an institution of the European Union, although the EU contributes to its budget and is represented on its governing bodies; the Institute is closely tied to the European integration project. As of 2026 it has 24 contracting states, all of them EU member states.
Teaching and research are organised through four departments - Economics, History, Law and Political and Social Sciences - alongside the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, the School of Transnational Governance and the Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies. The Institute also hosts the Historical Archives of the European Union, the official archival repository of the EU institutions, and a research library specialising in the social sciences.
Around 130 fully funded doctoral grants are offered each year, financed principally by the national grant-awarding authorities of the contracting states. In 2025 the Institute reported a community of roughly 1,000 scholars drawn from 97 countries. The EUI marked its fiftieth anniversary in May 2026.
Contents
History
Origins
Proposals for a European university predate the European Communities. The idea was advocated at the Congress of Europe in 1948 (eventually leading to the College of Europe) and again at the European Cultural Conference held in Lausanne the following year, in both cases by the pro-European movements rather than by governments.
The project first acquired governmental backing at the Messina Conference of 1955, where the German secretary of state Walter Hallstein proposed a European training and research centre for the nuclear sciences, an idea subsequently reflected in the Euratom Treaty. The Italian government pressed for the institution to be sited in Florence. Giorgio La Pira, then mayor of the city, argued in a 1961 speech at the Palazzo Vecchio for a rather different institution: a 'world university' framed around decolonisation and the study of the contemporary world as a whole, rather than a specifically European body. This alternative conception did not prevail.
Progress was slow and negotiations conducted outside the Euratom framework by a working group chaired by Pierre Pescatore made little headway, the proposal meeting resistance from national universities in Germany, Italy and Belgium, which feared that a European university would divert public funds and struggle to attract the strongest students. Heads of state and government discussed the project at Bonn in July 1961, but the initiative stalled during the empty chair crisis. It was revived at the Hague summit of 1969, by which point the intended focus had shifted decisively from the nuclear sciences to the human and social sciences.
Establishment
Preparatory conferences in Florence in 1970 and Rome in 1971 settled the essential features of the new body: it would be reserved for postgraduate study, and it would stand outside the Community's own institutional structure. Education ministers meeting within the Council of the Communities recorded their agreement in principle in November 1971.
The Convention setting up a European University Institute was signed in Florence on 19 April 1972 by Belgium, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Annexed to it was a protocol on the privileges and immunities of the Institute, which forms an integral part of the Convention, and the Institute was required to conclude a headquarters agreement with the Italian government. A preparatory committee chaired by the Dutch historian and diplomat Max Kohnstamm was charged with establishing the Institute's administration, staffing and academic profile between 1972 and 1975.
Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom, which had joined the European Communities in 1973, acceded to the Convention during the preparatory phase; the United Kingdom became a contracting state on 24 February 1975. The Convention entered into force in 1975, and the Institute opened at the Badia Fiesolana in November 1976 with an initial intake of 70 researchers. Kohnstamm served as its first president.
Development
Membership widened in step with successive enlargements of the Communities, with Greece, Spain, Portugal and later Austria, Finland and Sweden acceding to the Convention; the accessions were given effect through decisions of the Institute's High Council amending the founding text. A revising Convention was signed by the then twelve Community member states in Florence in June 1992.
The Institute's remit broadened considerably from the 1980s onwards. Following decisions taken in 1983 to open the Community archives to the public, and a 1984 agreement between the Commission of the European Communities and the EUI, the Historical Archives of the European Union were established in Florence and opened to researchers in 1986. The Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies was founded in 1993 to complement the four disciplinary departments with problem-driven, policy-oriented research. The Max Weber Programme for postdoctoral studies admitted its first cohort in September 2006, and the Florence School of Transnational Governance was launched in 2017.
The estate expanded in parallel. The Historical Archives moved into the restored Villa Salviati in 2012, and in 2021 the School of Transnational Governance took up premises at Palazzo Buontalenti in central Florence.
The United Kingdom ceased to be a contracting state in connection with its withdrawal from the European Union. The British government maintained that leaving the EU automatically entailed leaving the EUI Convention - a reading disputed by some academic commentators - and gave effect to the departure through a statutory instrument made under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Croatia's accession as a contracting state was marked in 2025.
A new institutional strategy covering 2026 to 2031 was adopted by the High Council in 2025, organised around four 'research horizons' and six cross-institutional priorities. The Institute celebrated fifty years since its opening with a three-day programme in Florence and Fiesole from 7 to 9 May 2026, comprising an opening ceremony at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, a ministerial summit on the future of universities attended by ministers from the contracting states and the first edition of a public research festival, EUIdeas.
Campus
The Institute's main campus lies in the area of San Domenico, between Fiesole and Florence, and is dispersed across a dozen or so historic villas and conventual buildings, many of which date back to the Renaissance period and have been restored along with their landscaped gardens. Most of these are owned by the Italian state and made available to the EUI under the headquarters arrangements. The campus is served by a canteen (mensa), a student-run bar and a housing office. Besides the three buildings described below, the estate includes Villa Schifanoia, Villa La Fonte, Villa Il Poggiolo, Villa Paola, the Convento di San Domenico and Villa Malafrasca.
Badia Fiesolana
The Badia Fiesolana has been the Institute's headquarters since 1976. The site was the cathedral of Fiesole until 1028, and a monastery dedicated to Saint Bartholomew was founded there by Camaldolese monks between 1025 and 1028; it later passed to Benedictines from Monte Cassino and afterwards to the Canons Regular of Saint Augustine. The complex took substantially its present form between 1456 and 1467 under a Renaissance rebuilding commissioned by Cosimo de' Medici, carried out under Michelozzo and, according to Giorgio Vasari, with the involvement of Filippo Brunelleschi. The church façade was left unfinished on Cosimo's death, preserving the inlaid white and green marble of the earlier Romanesque front.
The buildings house the offices of the President and Secretary-General, the EUI Library, the Department of Political and Social Sciences and several administrative services. The fifteenth-century church continues to be used for the Institute's annual conferring ceremony and other events.
Villa Salviati
Villa Salviati stands on the Florentine hills along the Via Bolognese. A fortified house occupied the site from the twelfth century; the estate was acquired by Jacopo Salviati in 1445 and maintained by the Salviati, a family of wool merchants and bankers closely connected to the Medici, who added the grottoes and gardens that survive today. In later centuries it changed hands repeatedly, its owners including the Borghese princes and the tenor Mario.
When the estate failed to find a private buyer around 2000, the Italian state purchased it with a view to transferring it to the EUI as the seat of the Historical Archives. After extensive restoration and the construction of a purpose-built repository, the Archives moved in during 2012. Since 2016 the villa has also accommodated the Department of Law, the Department of History and the Academy of European Law.
Palazzo Buontalenti
Palazzo Buontalenti, also known as the Casino Mediceo di San Marco, stands on Via Cavour at the corner of Piazza San Marco in central Florence. The site had earlier held the Medici garden of Lorenzo the Magnificent, where an academy of sculpture counted the young Michelangelo among those who frequented it. The present building was constructed between 1568 and 1574 for Francesco I de' Medici to designs by Bernardo Buontalenti, with the piano nobile placed unusually at ground level to accommodate the grand duke's laboratory and alchemical experiments. It was extended in the seventeenth century for Cardinal Carlo de' Medici to designs by Gherardo Silvani and decorated with a fresco cycle celebrating the dynasty.
Later uses included barracks, a customs house and - during Florence's period as capital of Italy between 1865 and 1871 - the Ministry of Finance. It subsequently served as the seat of the Court of Appeal and Assizes until 2012. Part of the complex has housed the Florence School of Transnational Governance since 2021 and a further section reopened in 2026 as an exhibition space.
Organisation and administration
Contracting states
The Institute is funded and governed by the states party to its Convention, which are generally required to be member states of the European Union. As of May 2026 there are 24: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. The three EU member states that are not party to the Convention are the Czech Republic, Hungary and Lithuania. The United Kingdom was a contracting state from 1975 until its withdrawal in connection with Brexit.
Each contracting state contributes to the Institute's budget according to an agreed scale and funds doctoral grants for candidates admitted under its quota.
Governance
The Convention vests authority in three bodies: the High Council, the President and the Academic Council. The High Council is the Institute's highest governing body and is composed of delegates of the contracting states, typically a senior official from the ministry responsible for higher education, research or foreign affairs together with an academic. It exercises oversight, draws up the rules governing the Institute's activities, adopts the budget and appoints the President and the Secretary-General. Representatives of the European Commission, the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament also sit on the High Council. Its presidency rotates annually among the contracting states, each term running from 1 January to 31 December; Portugal held it in 2025, Romania in 2026, with Slovenia due to take it in 2027.
Four subsidiary bodies assist the High Council. The Research Council provides external advice on research matters and is composed of twelve senior scholars from outside the Institute, half appointed by the High Council and half by the Academic Council, together with the President ex officio. A Budget and Finance Committee advises on matters with financial implications, and a Grants Committee deals with doctoral funding. A Strategic Standing Committee, created in 2018-2019, advises on strategy and certain senior appointments and is composed of delegations of contracting states on a rotating basis together with external experts.
The Academic Council oversees research and teaching, appoints academic staff and sets the rules governing academic life. Its membership includes the Executive Committee, representatives of the professoriate and representatives of research fellows, academic assistants, doctoral researchers, master's students and non-academic staff. The Executive Committee - composed of the heads of academic units, the Provosts, the Dean of Graduate Studies and student and researcher representatives - supports the President in day-to-day management.
The President directs the Institute in accordance with the Convention and takes any decision not reserved to another body. Patrizia Nanz, a German political scientist, was appointed in November 2023 and took office on 15 March 2024.
Yves Mény, who had founded and directed the Robert Schuman Centre between 1993 and 2001, served as president from 2002 to 2009. Josep Borrell Fontelles took office in 2010 and left in 2012; Marise Cremona was appointed president ad interim in June 2012 and served until Joseph Weiler took up the post in September 2013. Renaud Dehousse succeeded Weiler on 1 September 2016 and completed his term at the end of 2023.
Organisation
As an intergovernmental organisation, the EUI is regulated by its founding treaty rather than by Italian law or any other national system. The Convention confers on it the power to award a doctorate in the disciplines it teaches, subject to conditions laid down by the Academic Council, and Article 14 provides the legal basis for degrees other than the doctorate, under which the Institute's master's programmes have been developed with the authorisation of the High Council. Because the Institute sits outside national higher education systems it does not appear on the lists of recognised institutions maintained under the Lisbon Recognition Convention; recognition of its qualifications rests instead on the Convention itself and on a 1985 recommendation of the education ministers of the member states.
Academic work is carried out through the four departments, the Robert Schuman Centre, the School of Transnational Governance and the Max Weber Programme, supported by the Library, the Historical Archives, the Academic Service and a Management Team drawn from the directors of the administrative services and representatives of the academic units. In 2025 the Institute employed 221 full- and part-time professors, 231 academic and research staff and 375 professional staff.
Finances
The Institute is financed by contributions from the contracting states, a budget subvention from the European Union, dedicated funding for the Historical Archives, and revenue it generates itself through competitive research grants, partnerships and executive education.
For the 2025 financial year, the EUI recorded total revenue of approximately €105.3 million against expenditure of approximately €99.4 million. Contributions from the contracting states accounted for around 29.6 per cent of revenue and the EU budget subvention for around 8.8 per cent, with externally funded research projects contributing roughly 31 per cent. External funding for research activities totalled about €32.4 million, of which some 62 per cent came from EU-funded projects, 30 per cent from privately funded projects and 8 per cent from other public sources.
Contributions to the pension scheme and a severance fund for teaching staff form a separate budget title, and the School of Transnational Governance has been funded through a dedicated title since its creation.
Affiliations
The EUI is a member of CIVICA, an alliance of European institutions in the social sciences, and takes part in the Erasmus+ programme. In 2025, it reported 126 global partners and set out plans to renew institutional partnerships with bodies including the European Investment Bank and the European Stability Mechanism. Through its Widening Europe Programme the Institute supports research collaboration with institutions in central and eastern Europe and in EU candidate countries.
Academic profile
Doctoral programme
The doctoral programme is the Institute's principal academic activity. It is a structured four-year programme leading to a doctorate in economics, history, law, or political and social sciences, combining coursework in theory and methods, seminars and workshops and professional development training alongside supervised dissertation work. Approximately 130 places are offered each year. The Institute also awards an LLM in comparative, European and international law and a Master of Research in Economics. In 2024, 116 doctoral and LLM theses were defended.
Applications open in early November for entry the following September, with a deadline in January; candidates apply directly to the Institute and are assessed by departmental selection panels. The application for admission also serves as the application for a national grant in most cases, so that a separate funding application is not normally required. The Institute reported that doctoral applications grew by 9 per cent in 2025, which it attributed to a revised digital recruitment strategy.
Doctoral grants and tuition are met by the national grant-awarding authorities of the contracting states, with each state operating its own scheme and eligibility rules. Arrangements vary: several states fund three years, with candidates able to apply to the EUI directly for a fourth-year grant subject to satisfactory progress. The Institute additionally offers special doctoral fellowships and departmental schemes funded from external grants.
Departments
The Department of Economics trains researchers across theoretical and applied fields. Its programme opens with foundational coursework in microeconomics, macroeconomics and econometrics before moving to specialised courses, seminars and workshops oriented towards research and towards policy debate in the EU and beyond. The department also delivers the Master of Research in Economics.
Formally the Department of History and Civilisation, the department concentrates on global, comparative and transnational approaches to the history of Europe in the world since 1400. It places emphasis on critical reflection about the writing and teaching of history across national borders and on connecting historical scholarship to contemporary questions.
The Department of Law works on European law, international law and public and private law, running a structured doctoral programme built around research-oriented courses. Scholarship produced in the department spans doctrinal, empirical, socio-legal and critical approaches. The department is based at Villa Salviati alongside the Academy of European Law.
The Department of Political and Social Sciences covers comparative politics, political theory, international relations and sociology, with an emphasis on cross-disciplinary work. It is the Institute's most highly placed department in international subject rankings.
Florence School of Transnational Governance
The Florence School of Transnational Governance was established in 2017 and has occupied Palazzo Buontalenti since 2021, the building having been made available by the Italian government. It teaches governance beyond the state; its offer comprises the two-year Master of Arts in Transnational Governance, a Global Executive Master, executive training courses and the Policy Leader Fellowship.
The Policy Leader Fellowship is a residential programme for mid-career policy professionals from government, civil society, the media and international organisations, who spend five or ten months developing a policy project and contributing to a faculty-led collective project. Alexander Stubb directed the School from May 2020 until February 2024, when he left to take office as President of Finland.
Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
Named after Robert Schuman, the Centre was established in 1993 as an interdisciplinary research centre carrying out policy-relevant work alongside the disciplinary departments and engaging with actors in the public and private sectors. Its work spans European governance and democracy, migration, economic and monetary policy, competition and market regulation, energy and climate and media pluralism, delivered through constituent programmes including the Florence School of Regulation, the Florence School of Banking and Finance, the Migration Policy Centre, the Global Governance Programme, the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom, the Centre for Judicial Cooperation and the Centre for a Digital Society. In 2025, the Centre hosted eight research programmes and some 350 scholars and staff.
Max Weber Programme
The Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies opened in September 2006 with an initial cohort of 40 fellows and describes itself as the largest international postdoctoral programme in the social sciences and humanities in Europe. Between 50 and 60 fellowships of one or two years are offered annually, open to applicants of any nationality within five years of completing a doctorate; the core fellowships have been funded by the European Commission, supplemented by grants from national governments and foundations.
Fellows are affiliated to one of the four departments, the Robert Schuman Centre or the School of Transnational Governance; the programme combines individual research with structured training in academic communication, teaching and grant-writing. The Institute registered 68 Max Weber Fellows in 2025.
Library
The EUI Library occupies a wing of the Badia Fiesolana and specialises in the social sciences, holding substantial print and digital collections in several languages and providing access to news databases and digital archives. Its European Documentation Centre, established in 1976, collects official EU publications and documents together with grey literature and secondary works on the EU institutions and other international organisations, and is open to external users as well as members of the Institute.
The Library also manages Cadmus, the EUI Research Repository, launched in 2003, which collects and provides access to the research output of members of the Institute in line with its open access policy (working papers, books, contributions to books, e-Books, articles and theses). In 2024 the repository registered 1,413 research outputs, of which 66 per cent were available in open access.
Rankings
In 2024, the EUI was ranked 6th in the world in political science and among the first 100 in sociology, public administration, and economics on the Shanghai Ranking. It was also ranked 31st in the world for Politics and International Studies, 51st in the world for History, and 89th in the world for Law in the QS World University Rankings.
The EUI Political and Social Science department was ranked 1st in Europe and 5th worldwide in the Hix ranking of such departments (which was published in 2004 and covered the period 1998–2002). In November 2009, the same department was included in the Die Zeit 'CHE Excellence Ranking' for political science.
Historical Archives of the European Union
The Historical Archives of the European Union (HAEU) are the official archival repository of the institutions, bodies and agencies of the European Union and are housed at the EUI under agreement with the European Commission. Their creation followed a decision of the European Coal and Steel Community and Council Regulation 354/83 of 1983 opening the Community archives to the public; a 1984 agreement between the Commission and the Institute located them in Florence and they opened to researchers in 1986, initially at Villa Il Poggiolo. A framework partnership agreement concluded with the Commission in 2011 reinforced their role.
Since 2012 the Archives have occupied the Villa Salviati, where a purpose-built facility provides some 11,000 linear metres of shelving. Alongside the deposited records of the EU institutions, the HAEU holds more than 160 private collections of individuals, movements and associations involved in European integration and has archived the websites of the EU institutions on a quarterly basis since 2013. Records are consulted in the reading room or online under a thirty-year rule and the Archives administer several research grant schemes.
Major initiatives
The State of the Union
The State of the Union is an annual conference on European affairs organised by the Institute since 2011, held over several days in the spring and timed to coincide with the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration on 9 May. Its themes are set by a scientific committee drawn from the Institute's academic units, and the programme brings together heads of state and government, EU officials, academics, journalists and civil society representatives.
The first edition took place in the Salone dei Cinquecento of the Palazzo Vecchio as part of the Festival d'Europa, with four panels and 32 speakers including Jerzy Buzek, José Manuel Barroso and Ivo Josipović; the Institute subsequently assumed sole responsibility for the event. Later editions have been addressed by serving presidents of the European Commission and the European Council.
OPEN
OPEN is an exhibition and curatorial project mounted at Palazzo Buontalenti, developed as the first public output of the Institute's Open Lab initiative, which convenes scholars, artists and civic actors around shared themes. The Institute created a new exhibition space in the palazzo for the purpose, and the first show opened during the fiftieth anniversary celebrations in May 2026.
Curated by Sergio Risaliti and Stefania Rispoli, the exhibition brings together seven international artists - among them Berlinde De Bruyckere, Agnieszka Polska and Elena Mazzi - in dialogue with research by the EUI economic historian Johanna Gautier Morin on the "invisible economy": unrecorded work and resources that fall outside conventional statistics. The display is organised around four themes of gathering, exhaustion, irreversibility and mutation; taking its title from a 2015 work by Riccardo Previdi. Works are installed in the former courtrooms and archive rooms of the Court of Appeal. The exhibition was scheduled to run until 12 October 2026.