The Centre for the New Europe AISBL is a non-profit, non-partisan research foundation based in Brussels. CNE has a unique modus operandi, reflecting the EU itself. Our HQ is in Brussels, but we have a network of Fellows based across the Member States, who work from both their own country and in Brussels.

Over the years, CNE has published dozens of books, thousands of newspaper and magazine articles, and regularly hosts EU Commission staffers, Members of the European Parliament and key journalists at luncheon and dinner discussions. Our role is to draw attention to new research and new perspectives and to give policymakers and journalists time to pause and reflect on the big picture. At our luncheon and dinner events, we encourage open debate and frank discussion on European public policy.

CNE is named for the "New Europe" now being born through the European Union's daring, historic experiment to unite some 500 million Europeans in peace and freedom. As an active member of civil society, the Centre sees itself as part of that grand ambition to create a free, prosperous and peaceful Europe.

Every enterprise is guided by a view of the world, a philosophy. Our philosophy goes under many banners: "European liberal," "pro-market," "individualist," "progressive" and many others. We call ourselves simply "Liberal."

We find that support for liberal ideas--free trade, social tolerance, economic liberty--extends far beyond Europe's Liberal parties. Therefore, we back no party or programme. We find that liberalism has friends and enemies in every party. We hope to unite its friends and persuade its enemies.

The liberal tradition is one of Europe's unique gifts to the world. The liberal tradition stretches back to eighteenth-century France, to the writings of Benjamin Constant and Frédéric Bastiat. It embraces the ideas of such German thinkers as Wilhelm von Humboldt and Friedrich Schiller. It is enriched by the Austrian school of economics – which produced giants like Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich August von Hayek – and by the leaders of the "Scottish enlightenment," men like Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and David Hume.

At its core, liberalism is about the dignity and worth of every individual. It welcomes a society of choices about what to think, what to do, what to buy, what to be. Private property ensures the freedom of the individual in his private sphere. Free enterprise allows him to buy and sell on the terms he thinks best. Free markets and secure property rights allow him to dream and to innovate and to bring into the world new products, services and works of art.

A liberal society does not punish success with confiscatory taxes or reward rivals with grasping regulation or heaping subsidies. Nor does it forget the unfortunate, to whom it offers freedom, hope, the balm of individual compassion and a wealth of choices to try anew.