In 2026, European strategic issues are studied by all the Institute’s auditors, during Europe Month like the rest of the year: regional sessions, Youth and economic intelligence cycles, national session… each auditor is led to understand the many aspects of European security and defense system, in its political, economic and industrial aspects. At the same time, the Institute also organizes dedicated international sessions.
After the Second World War, the rebirth of the IHEDN in 1948 took place in a context of progressive structuring of European security, illustrated in the same year by the signing of the Brussels Treaty. From the first post-war session, after the opening address, the speech that listeners listen to focuses on “The Brussels Pact, its goal, its current achievements, its future prospects.”
Subsequently, the Institute’s links with the future European Union but also with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), founded in 1949 and based in Paris since 1950, continued to strengthen. In the fall of 1951, the IHEDN was joined in its premises at the Artillery Pavilion of the Military School by the NATO Defense College, created by the director of the IHEDN, Vice-Admiral André Lemonnier, drawing inspiration in particular from the institute French.
Admiral Lemonnier was responding to a request from the supreme commander of the Atlantic Alliance in Europe, the American General Dwight Eisenhower, of whom he was at the same time the naval deputy. When France left the integrated command of NATO in 1966, the College moved to Rome and the organization’s headquarters to Brussels.
Later, in the 2000s, France and Germany supported the creation of a European training capacity in security and defense. The idea draws its source from the European session of the IHEDN, the first of which was held at the end of 1988. Until its disappearance in 2004, it trained 469 listeners from 35 countries on the continent, including those from the former Soviet bloc in 1993.
