The Federation des etudiants nationalistes (FEN) was formed by Parisian university and lycée students in 1960 It would prove to be one of the intellectual forerunners of the French and European New Right, including such groups as GRECE, whose membership extended to Italy, Germany, Britain, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, Austria, the Netherlands and Czechoslovakia.The foundation of the FEN was in part a hostile reaction to the call of the Union nationale des etudiants de France (UNEF) at its 1960 annual conference for the French government to engage in negotiations with the FLN, for the purpose of ending the conflict in Algeria. The establishment of the Federation was not simply an impulsive decision after this UNEF resolution, however. It had been conceived prior to this conference as a response to two longstanding concerns: first, to provide an organisation for young intellectuals who defended the cause of French Algeria and were disillusioned by the Fifth Republic; and second, to offer a legal structure for reviving those groups of the far right that had been deprived of legality.

It is striking just how pervasive Europe was in the group's discourse, as is apparent in two foundational manifestos of the group, which remained constant touchstones: the Manifeste de la classe 60 (1960) and Pour une critique positive (1962). In the former we learn that members aspired to become ‘le Francais de type nouveau sur lequel la Nation et l'Europe s'appuieront pour revivre et assumer leur destin’. In the latter the group complained about the lack of coherence of the French nationalist right and noted that Europe meant different or contradictory things to its various groups. So, what did it mean to the FEN?

Before tackling this question, one should guard against projecting into the group too great a degree of coherence and unity. After all, ideological divisions between factions advocating a nationalism grounded in a Europeanist ideology, on one hand, and a francocentric understanding of nationalism based on a certain nineteenth century tradition on the other, led to a split in the group in 1964. The FEN is also contextualised within the history of the broader French and European far right, and its ideas about Europe.