Pompeu Fabra University hosted the 20th summer school of Europaeum, an association of prestigious European universities of which UPF has been a member since November 2012, together with Oxford (United Kingdom), Leiden (the Netherlands), Bologna (Italy), Bonn (Germany), Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne (France), Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic), Helsinki (Finland), the Jagiellonian University of Krakow (Poland) and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva (Switzerland).

Based on the title " Rights and Citizens in Europe: are we all equal?, thirty graduate students from nine European universities met on the Ciutadella campus between 2 and 7 September to participate in debates in which they analyzed and discussed highly topical issues including the following: Is everyone in Europe entitled to the same rights? What makes a European a good citizen? What is meant by civil society? How can European rights survive the current crisis? How should we protect the rights of minorities? Do Muslims have freedom to wear the burka? Which rights do countries have to establish their own rights?

The sessions were attended by academic experts, including several lecturers from the Departments of Law, Humanities and Political Sciences at UPF, as well as lecturers from other European universities.

Other guests included representatives of civil society who were invited to set out their views, including representatives of SOS Racisme and Greenpeace, as well as speakers from the European Commission, the Domestic Violence Unit of the Catalan police force and the judicial world.

The summer school was opened on 2 September by Professor Jose Ferrer, the Vice-rector for International Relations at UPF, and Paul Flather, Professor of Mansfield College, Oxford University and the General Secretary of Europaeum. On the next day, 3 September, the rector of UPF, Jaume Casals, hosted all the participants at a reception held in the Reflection Room on the campus.

Europaeum acts as a network of collaboration between its member Universities and facilitates the creation of bilateral or multilateral mobility, joint research and teaching initiatives. It also does very important work based on European studies, seen from a highly cross-disciplinary perspective, covering political science, international relations, law, economics, history, various cultural spheres and communication.

The Europaeum 2013 Summer School is one of many activities that the association promotes: others include summer schools and regular research workshops for graduate students, scholarship programmes for students for mobility between some member universities, visiting lecturer programmes, annual conferences, with the participation of lecturers from various universities, joint teaching on common programmes, joint research on public policy and European issues and a Europe-United States transatlantic dialogue programme.