It is with great sadness that the Natolin campus of the College of Europe has learned that Professor Georges RENCKI died on 5 March 2017. For a number of years he was a Visiting Professor at the Natolin campus.
Professor Georges RENCKI was a great Polish patriot and a devoted European. He was a member of the Polish resistance during World War II, fought in the Warsaw Uprising (1944) and was awarded numerous medals of honour.
In 1948, Professor RENCKI founded the Interuniversity Federalist Union, a university group advocating European unification, for which he served as Secretary General until 1951. In the same year he established the European Assembly of Political Youth which brought together the youth sections of all the democratic political parties in Europe. He was Secretary General of this organization until 1954, when he became Chief of the External Relations Service of the International Secretariat of the European Movement, which was then headed by Robert SCHUMAN.
Later in his career, Professor RENCKI was a high ranking European Commission official. Between 1993-2001 he was a special adviser to the European Commission on Regional Policy reform. He was also adviser to four Polish Prime Ministers on European Affairs. From 1991 he was an Honorary Director-General of the European Commission.