European Documentation and Information Centre

The European Documentation and Information Centre, abbreviated CEDI (French: Centre Européen de Documentation et d'Information), was a former think tank founded in 1952 on the occasion of an international congress held in Santander, Spain. The objective of the organization was to unite various European conservative and Christian Democratic political organizations which formed in several Western European states during postwar reconstruction, the emerging Cold War and the beginnings of what would later be called European integration. During the 1950s and the 1960s, the CEDI was an important contact pool for European politicians. During its early years the CEDI's ideology and program was dominated by its first president, Otto von Habsburg, son of the last emperor of Austria. It was dissolved in 1990 following the collapse of the Iron Curtain.

The Franco regime in Spain made use of the CEDI to get in contact with high-ranking persons of the political, military, economic and cultural life from Western Europe and thus end its post-war international isolation. By preaching the necessity of cultural exchange and the religious unity of the occident, the CEDI aimed at a political, military and economic inclusion of Spain into the beginning process of European Integration.

The annual congresses of the CEDI, which were nearly always held in Spain, brought together many office bearers and dignitaries of the conservative milieu. Besides the Spanish initiators – hereunder Franco’s foreign minister Alberto Martín Artajo, the director of the Institute for Hispanic Culture Alfredo Sánchez Bella and José Ignacio Escobar Kirkpatrick Marqués de Valdeiglesias – there was a strong support for CEDI’s activities in Germany, Austria and France. The expelled Austrian Heir Apparent Otto von Habsburg was the founding and, later on, honorary president of the organization. Germany was represented by high-ranking members of the Christian Democratic and Christian Social Union of Bavaria parties, as for example the ministers Hans-Joachim von Merkatz and Richard Jaeger. The French section of the Documentation Centre was led by the Count François de la Noë and Michel Habib-Deloncle.

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