Center for European Renewal


The Center for European Renewal is a pan-European conservative organization based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. The CER was founded as the Vanenburg Society in the summer of 2007 by a group of mainly European conservatives. They included Dutch ethicist and legal philosopher Andreas Kinneging, the German political thinker Caspar von Schrenck-Notzing, Czech think-tank director Roman Joch, Spanish publishing executive Jorge Soley Climent, Flemish law professor Matthias Storme, and Alexandre Pesey of :fr:Institut de formation politique|L'Institut de formation politique.
Following an exploratory meeting at Vanenburg Castle in Putten, the Netherlands, in the spring of 2006, the CER has held annual summer meetings—in Vienna, Madrid, Budapest, Krakow, Leuven, Cirencester, Prague, Warsaw, Dubrovnik, Cirencester, Berlin and Riga. Speakers at these meetings have included Roger Scruton, Ryszard Legutko, Chantal Delsol, David Gress, Rémi Brague, Anthony Daniels, Agnieszka Kołakowska, and Gabriele Kuby, as well as other young scholars, policy analysts, journalists, and political activists.
The CER aims to become a European network of thinkers, writers, scholars, etc., along the lines of the US-based Philadelphia Society. Inspired by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, it also hopes to eventually offer educational programs.
To date, the CER has published one collection of essays, Plato on Wall Street, in collaboration with the Ośrodek Myśli Politycznej. Some members of the CER also produce an occasional magazine entitled The European Conservative.