Leap2020 - History

History

LEAP/Europe2020 was born from the sudden awareness, at the turn of the 1990s, that the European project was heading towards a dead end by lack of mid-term visibility. Either depending too much on the ruling class or mere «national think-tanks», research centres were unable to comprehend the European dimension.
LEAP/Europe2020’s approach therefore consisted of building the structural and methodological means needed to propose a substantial political project to the European Union. The group really started gaining momentum when the Santer Commission resigned in 1999. Since 1995, they had anticipated that the European institutions would encounter problems because its machinery lacked democratic mechanisms. When the Santer crisis confirmed their analysis, the work conducted by LEAP/Europe2020’s researchers was acknowledged. National and European public organizations became interested in taking part in the conferences organized by the group and eager to receive their reports. In September 2008, when the financial and economic crisis broke, confirming LEAP/Europe2020 forecasts since February 2006, the research centre again proved the accurateness of its analyses and methods of anticipation.