On the 60th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome, the Italian Embassy in Lebanon, the Delegation of the European Union and the Lebanese American University, en collaboration avec the Italian Cultural Institute, have organized a lecture by Ambassador Vincenzo Grassi on the theme “Europe at Sixty. A state of the Union”. The lecture will be opened by H.E. Ambassador Christina LASSEN, Head of the Delegation of the European Union and by H.E. Massimo MAROTTI, Ambassador of Italy.
Signed on March 25th, 1957 by representatives of Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany, the Treaties established the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM), paving the way for the birth of the current European Union.
Ambassador Grassi is the Secretary General of the European University Institute, established in 1972 by the same six countries that signed the first Treaties. As stated in Article 2 of its founding convention, ‘The aim of the Institute shall be to contribute, by its activities in the fields of higher education and research, to the development of the cultural and scientific heritage of Europe […] It shall take into account Europe’s cultural and linguistic pluralism and relations with cultures outside Europe.’