A French proposal to create a ¡°European Academy¡± could help to rejuvenate efforts to build a common continental identity, academics said, but they have cautioned against duplication and exclusivity.

Under France¡¯s presidency of the council of the European Union, which runs from this month to June 2022, President Emmanuel Macron ¡°a?¡®European Academy¡¯ bringing together a hundred or so?intellectuals from the 27 countries and?from all disciplines to shed light on the?European debate¡±.?

Thierry Chopin,?professor of political science at the Catholic University of Lille, said the idea would be ¡°to create a European structure to work on the narrative of ¡®belonging¡¯ and on common European identity, mainly through the academic world, but also by involving the cultural world more widely¡±.

¡°The idea is that there will be no European sovereignty without a sense of belonging and active identification to an EU-wide political community,¡± he said. ¡°In concrete terms, I don't know if it could be a permanent structure or an annual meeting.¡±?

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Renaud?Dehousse, president of the European University Institute, a Florence-based research university created by an international treaty in 1972, said that ¡°what is being sought is really a debate¡±.

¡°If you want to get university professors together to discuss research agenda, it¡¯s one thing ¨C we do this on a daily basis, and it¡¯s great. But we¡¯re talking of something else. We¡¯re talking of people whose task it will be to inject new ideas,¡± he said.

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¡°There is a big Macron agenda which says, ¡®Let¡¯s try to reinvent the meaning for Europe.¡¯ Europe has been confronted for decades now, at least two decades, with a certain disenchantment, of which Brexit has been one manifestation, but only one.

¡°There¡¯s a widespread awareness across Europe that this is a problem that needs to be addressed and that one needs to ask oneself what the big issues in today¡¯s Europe are.¡±

Professor Dehousse argued that the new academy would be sufficiently different from Academia Europaea, a learned academy founded by 55 scholars in Cambridge in 1988, which now boasts almost 5,000 members from across the continent.

¡°Academia is really a learned society for academics, whereas Macron makes a different point, he wants?intellectuals ¨C thinkers, who may not be academics,¡± he said.

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But other heads of pan-European academies had reservations. Sierd Cloetingh, professor of earth sciences at Utrecht University and president of Academia Europaea, said that restricting membership to around 100 would allow for ¡°a little bit more than three per member state¡±. He also raised concerns about restricting membership to academics from within the European Union only, excluding scholars from countries such as the UK.

¡°If Academia Europaea would have stayed to the initial number of?founders?then we would not be able to function the way we are functioning today, so I see this as a first reflection from President Macron, in terms of the numbers he is mentioning and also the restriction to [the] EU,¡± Professor Cloetingh said.

¡°I have to say it sounds like something that already exists,¡± said Gemma?Modinos, reader in neuroscience and mental health at King¡¯s College London and chair of the Young Academy of Europe, who questioned ¡°the level of awareness of President Macron of what already exists in terms of European-wide academies¡±.

The move comes as the European Universities Initiative, a Macron-led plan to create cross-border institutions, offers a third round of funding.

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ben.upton@timeshighereducation.com