Remarks by Commissioner Brunner at an event on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the Europa-Institut at Saarland University

Professor Bungenberg, Professor Holterhus, dear alumni, dear students, ladies and gentlemen,

Seventy-five years of the Europa-Institut. Thirty years of EVER Alumni. It's an honor for me to celebrate both with you.

A warm welcome also to the new students, now three days into your Welcome Week. I had the good fortune to meet several Saarbrücken alumni when I was a Bluebook trainee many many years ago, and it is good to see some familiar, if also a bit older faces again this afternoon.

Few places in Europe sit at a crossroads quite like Saarbrücken. Here we have the intersection of Germany and France, with Luxembourg also just an hour away. For much of the last century, this region changed hands, changed currencies, but in the end became a bridge – eine Brücke – not just across the river Saar but also between two countries at the centre of the EU that remain pillars of the European Union.

This feels familiar to me, because I grew up at a crossroads too, in Vorarlberg, where Austria, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany come together. At that time, Austria hadn't yet joined the European Union, Switzerland was not part of Schengen. Every border meant a passport check, and travelling meant a pocket full (unfortunately not always that full) of Schillings, Swiss Francs, Deutsche Mark and Lire. Today the Euro is part of daily life for some 350 million Europeans - and this January, Bulgaria became the twenty-first country to adopt it. Erasmus existed then too, but as a fraction of what it is today. Whatever legitimate frustrations we all have with Europe right now, we should not lose sight of how much better this Union already is than the one the Alumnis grew up in. That's not an accident — it's proof that what I'm about to describe isn't naïve.

Saarbrücken by the way played its own part in making that possible. On 13 July 1984, France and Germany signed an agreement here, to begin gradually abolishing checks at their common border.