“European Foundation Statute cases in the spotlight”

  • An international community of students is operating in 110 countries, including some EU Member States, supporting more than 12.000 kinds of traineeships for the students of some 2000 university and higher education institutions. The organisation is interested in establishing a foundation based in Belgium that would work internationally to support individual and collective projects to promote the exchange and understanding of cultural values. Given the international aims and outlook of the proposed foundation, the founders consider that the ability to use a European legal form, such as the European Foundation Statute, would be a significant advantage to the organisation.
  • A foundation dealing with rural development works across all the current 27 EU Member States. During the establishment process of the foundation, there were many questions and hesitations as to the best way of inserting a trans-national instrument of philanthropy into a national system of law, which would facilitate the attainment of the foundation’s statutory objectives, in the absence of a European framework . The foundation opted for a statute of a national public benefit foundation , but it included a provision in its statutes that it would adopt a European Foundation Statute as soon as such an option became available.
  • A foundation applied for recognition in another EU country in order to better manage the property it received from a bequest in that Member State. Its application was turned down by authorities although it fulfilled all requirements of foundation law
  • A Scandinavian philanthropist was seeking to start an initiative with friends – an art project called “the garden of love” in France. They would like to set it up as a European Foundation.