In memoriam Julien Vanderbeeken (1942–2024)

Julien Vanderbeeken, President of the Pan-European Union Belgium, former member of the Presidency and Deputy Secretary General of the International Pan-European Union, Secretary of the Pan-European Working Group in the European Parliament, died on Thursday 18 April 2024 at the age of 82.

The funeral service took place on Wednesday, 24 April 2024, in the Saint Etienne church in Ohain near Brussels.

In his condolences on behalf of the International Pan-European Union, President Alain Terrenoire emphasised Julien Vanderbeeken's significant contribution to representing the Pan-European vision in Belgium and thanked him in particular for his commitment to the European Parliament.

In the obituary, Secretary General Pavo Barišić quoted excerpts from a report on the history of the Pan-European Working Group in the European Parliament and on Julien Vanderbeeken's activities. The quotes are taken from the article ‘Spearhead in the European Parliament’, published by Stephanie Waldburg in the magazine‘Paneuropa Deutschland’ in May 2023.

Spearhead in the European Parliament

"75 years ago, Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi gathered in Gstaad the European Parliamentary Union (EPU), which he founded as part of the Paneuropa movement and which was described by the international press at the time as the ‘first European Parliament in history’. Since 1979, there has indeed been a European Parliament directly elected by the citizens, in which a Paneuropa Group, made up of numerous members from different political groups and nations, acts as the spearhead of the European idea.

Paneuropa founder Richard Count Coudenhove-Kalergi provided the initial impetus for the creation of a European Parliament. His successor as International President of the Paneuropa Union, Otto von Habsburg, had been a member of the European Parliament since the first European elections in 1979, something Coudenhove had dreamed of for twenty years.

Right at the beginning of his parliamentary activity, Otto von Habsburg founded a ‘Working Group for Central and Eastern Europe’ outside the official structures, which looked after the oppressed peoples behind the Iron Curtain. He took over the chairmanship himself. His deputies were two MPs from Italy, the Social Democrat of Czech origin Jiří Pelikan and the Liberal with Polish roots Jas Gawronski, Secretary General Bernd Posselt.

Nicolas Estgen, a Pan-European from Luxembourg who was elected Vice-President of the European Parliament in 1982, proposed extending the scope of such a cross-party group and forming a Parliamentary Council of the International Pan-European Union. For a while, the working group and the Council coexisted until the Pan-European Parliamentary Group was formally established, which Estgen headed. However, this activity only became truly systematic through the initiative of the Belgian Pan-European Julien Vanderbeeken.

The multilingual lawyer and banker had never held a political mandate, but had been active in an honorary capacity throughout the history of the European Parliament. He persuaded his compatriot, former Belgian Prime Minister Leo Tindemans, author of the most important reform plan for European integration in the 1970s, to chair the parliamentary body of the Pan-European Movement and, from the late 1980s onwards, organised sessions during the monthly plenary sessions in Strasbourg with first-class speakers, international guests from all over the world and a strong appeal to the general public.

Julien Vanderbeeken developed the ideas, made endless phone calls to find speakers from home and abroad, organised rooms and interpreters and personally distributed the multilingual invitations to each of his members until enough MEPs could be mobilised. He continued this unique commitment from 1999 under the chairmanship of the Franconian Vice-President of the European Parliament Ingo Friedrich and from 2009 under Paul Rübig MEP from Upper Austria, who was replaced in 2018 by Lukas Mandl MEP from Lower Austria, who heads the group today.

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They all (prominent emigrants, civil rights activists and politicians from many countries) not only came to Strasbourg as speakers, but Julien Vanderbeeken also made them known there by organising numerous individual meetings for them with the respective parliamentary presidents, group chairmen and the responsible politicians.

This help was even more important for another group of speakers who came from regions where dictatorship still prevailed or armed conflicts were raging. They had their say in the Strasbourg Paneuropa group, such as the health minister of the Chechen underground government driven into exile by Putin's Russia, Umar Khanbiyev, the former Archbishop of Mosul Georges Casmoussa, Prof Samir Khalil Samir SJ from Lebanon or Abduraman Egiz from the Mejlis of the Tatars in the Russian-occupied Crimea. Regularly present was the great Pan-European Bishop Franjo Komarica from Banja Luka, whose Bosnian diocese was ravaged by terror and expulsion and who mobilised political support and humanitarian aid for his compatriots and continues to do so today with his efforts to establish a Pan-European education centre in the former Maria Star monastery.

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One of the problematic aspects of the intensive working day, which ties up MEPs for eighty to one hundred hours a week, is that they can hardly maintain regular contact with other European institutions that are not part of their respective areas of expertise. Julien Vanderbeeken established systematic contacts with the multinational Eurocorps troops stationed in Strasbourg, whose commanding generals from various nations exchanged views with the Pan-European Parliamentary Group in order to develop strategies for building a European Defence Union and a European Army. This area is currently gaining topicality again. Major General Walter Spindler, who is now a member of the Presidency of the Pan-European Union Germany, was interviewed as an expert in December 2012.

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Following the departure of Julien Vanderbeeken for health reasons and the almost two-year break due to the coronavirus, Lukas Mandl is currently working flat out to put the Traditional Group on a new footing. The ‘Happy Hour of Free Speech’ format he has developed attracts many, especially young, parliamentarians to the discussion rounds, which take place on the Monday evening of each Strasbourg plenary week. His deputies are Maria Walsh from Ireland and the Croatian pan-European Karlo Ressler."

All of us who have had the opportunity to get to know and work with Julien Vanderbeeken appreciate his warm friendliness, his commitment to the unification of Europe and the human solidarity with which he has acted in the spirit of pan-European ideas.

Pavo Barišić, Secretary General