The importance of tertiary education institutions can never be over-emphasised, informing our youth of the historic and institutional reality of the EU. A whole generation of the European elite missed out on this specific training, and this has been of great harm to the European ideal. For this reason, it was with particular interest that I attended the start of the academic year at the European College of Parma (Italy) which offers a year of specialisation in Europe to young people of all nationalities, who have completed their university studies in their countries of origin. Present at this particular ceremony were, inter alia, President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano (former chairman of the European Parliament institutional committee) and Jacques Delors. Delors laid great stress on the significance of European integration. “Europe is, above all, peace and reconciliation between countries which, for centuries, had torn one another apart. It has the right and the duty to make its voice heard in the world because it is the world's largest trading power and the largest donor of aid to poor countries,” he said. The enthusiasm of the young people, to whom a united Europe is too often presented as a bureaucratic exercise with aims that are essentially economic, was moving. To them, the “fathers of Europe” are part of history, a subject to be studied, so meeting one of those who has been so closely involved was of special significance to them. That is important because, as Valéry Giscard d'Estaing stated recently, “it is the new generations whose university training has provided them with knowledge of Europe who will take Europe to the next level”. (F.R.)