The first contacts between the European Christian Base Communities date back to 1983 at the Congress of the Dutch Netherlands Communities in Amsterdam and continued in 1985 at the Congress of the Italian Base Communities in Turin.
But it is at Bilbao’s Congress in 1987, which set up a “European Collective” with the task of preparing the first true European Congress in Paris in 1991 on “Social Justice in Europe of 1992”, with more than 600 Delegates of 28 nationalities.
This was followed by other, less numerous, “European Seminars” in Innsbruck in 1993, in Geneva in 1995 (with 130 representatives from 14 countries and 18 European regions, with all the secretarial and translation engineered on site, and with extremely rich content) and in Edinburgh, Scotland, in the autumn of 2003.
In May 2009, the Collective and Local Communities organized a large meeting in Vienna, at the Akkonplatz community, where they found again
about 130 people coming from Austria, Basque Country, Belgium (Flanders and Wallonia-Brussels), Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain and Switzerland (Romance and German).
In September 2014 a “European Meeting”: “The Gospel Will Make Us Free” was held in Buizingen (Belgium) and was attended by 140 representatives from 10 European countries / regions.
The last European meeting was the Xth, “Christians committed to a more just world, in a poor church”, 35 years since the first held in Amsterdam, and has been held in Rimini (Italy) in September 2018. 110 persons were attending the meeting, from 6 European countries : Austria 5, Belgium 5, France 7, Italy 63, Spain 18, Switzerland 12, from 38 communities/groups – among them 15 from Italy and 23 from other countries.