The Gustav Stresemann Institut e.V.(GSI) – European Academy was founded and started its activities in 1959.

The history GSI began in 1951 with the foundation of the International Youth Secretariat of the European Movement with the aim to encourage the youth of Europe to actively take part in the building of a democratic and peaceful Europe. National Secretariats are opened in all democratic states of Western Europe.

In 1959 the German Secretariat became an independent institute for trans-national education and European co-operation. The new Institute was given the name of Gustav Stresemann Institute (GSI) to honour the achievements of the statesman and Peace Nobel Prize winner Gustav Stresemann.

In 1961 the GSI moved into its own building with conference and accommodation facilities near Bergisch-Gladbach. This centre was extended over the next years and became well-known as a leading educational centre under the name European Academy Lerbach.

In 1987 the new and larger conference centre in Bonn was inaugurated (www.gsi-bonn.de). The European conference and educational centre of GSI in Bonn is an independent, non-party and non-profit institution of political education. In this capacity and accredited by the state North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), the GSI with annually 1.600 seminars followed by 50.000 participants from all the world, is the biggest outside-school-training-institute in NRW.

The aims of the GSI educational work are to prepare people of all age groups for the challenges of the knowledge society in the 21st century through a wide range of learning programmes, to promote European integration and enlargement as well as international co-operation, to bring together people of different professional, educational and social background from Germany, Europe and other continents, to initiate constructive exchange of opinion and critical dialogue and to improve critical opinion-building and strengthen a democratic sense of responsibility.

Currently the GSI educational programme includes:

• European policies, deepening European integration, economic and monetary union
• Perspectives of a common European security policy, the EU basic rights
• European enlargement: prerequisites in the Union and the applicant states
• The role of Europe in global politics of the 21st century
• New aspects of international politics and co-operation
• Development policies/North-South policies
• West-East co-operation in management, capacity building, strengthening of local authorities and civil society organisations
• Current economic and social issues such as structural change, reform of the welfare state, information and media society, multi-cultural co-operation, migration etc.
• Law and politics, Xenophobia, right-wing extremism and violence
• Bilateral human relations, in particular of young people and teenagers
• Vocational training and qualification

Besides the in-house training and seminar-programme, GSI since many years is implementing projects world-wide, incl.:
• “Information and ratification campaign on the ICC in Russia, Turkey and Central Asian Countries” (EC-EIDHR), started in December 2005, duration 24 months.
• “Information and Ratification Campaign on the International Criminal Court (ICC) in Central  Asian Countries and Mongolia” (EC-EIDHR), implemented in 2003-2004.
• “Strengthening Capacities and Management Skills of Moldovan NGOs” (EC-IBPP, implemented in 2003-2004.
• “Training of Polish junior administrative decision makers” (TRANSFORM German Federal Government), implemented in 1999-2000
• “Strengthening local government structures in Belarus” (EC-Tacis Democracy Programme), implemented 1998-1999