The UvA-VU Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence aims to strengthen the visibility of European Union studies within the University of Amsterdam and the VU University Amsterdam, to stimulate excellence in interdisciplinary research, teaching and reflection on the EU, and to reach out to, and stimulate debate with, local and national communities and practitioners. The increasingly close, complex, and contested interdependencies between the Netherlands, Europe, and the wider world demand a long-term collaborative investment in the capacity to analyze and respond to the epochal challenges they pose for all concerned. The Centre will build on the foundations laid by the establishment of the Amsterdam Centre for Contemporary European StudieS (ACCESS EUROPE), an UvA-VU joint venture aimed at creating a new institutional platform for research, education, and public debate on the European Union and its member states. This high-profile initiative, endorsed by the Boards of both Universities, promotes interdisciplinary synergies between outstanding faculties at both universities (Social Sciences, Law, Humanities, Economics), and thereby leverages Amsterdam’s assets as a European capital and centre of excellence in the study of contemporary Europe. It has created a forum for dialogue and exchange on urgent questions concerning the dynamics and direction of contemporary Europe between academic researchers and a wide range of public and private stakeholders—local, national, and international—through public lectures, workshops and conferences. Like ACCESS EUROPE, the Centre will focus on six core themes: European Governance, European Constitutionalism, European Politics and Society, Political Economy of Integration and Welfare, Identity and Culture, and Europe and the World.