The mission of the European Schools is to provide a multilingual and multicultural education for nursery, primary and secondary level pupils. It is aimed primarily for children of staff of the European institutions.

The first European School was founded in Luxemburg in 1953. The European School Karlsruhe was the first to be set up in Germany. It was created in 1962 for the children of the personnel of European Institutions working for the European Research Institute- Joint Research Centre (https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en).

Nowadays the European School Karlsruhe offers a unique type of school for the children whose parents do not belong to the European Commission and who are coming from European and non-European countries.

The European Schools are official educational establishments controlled jointly by the governments of the Member States of the European Union. They are legally regarded as public institutions in all of these countries.

There are currently 13 European Schools (Alicante, Brussels I (Uccle + Berkendael), Brussels II (Woluwé), Brussels III (Ixelles), Brussels IV (Laeken), Frankfurt am Main, Mol, Bergen, Karlsruhe, Munich, Varese, Luxembourg I & Luxembourg II), in six countries (Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain and Luxembourg), with a total of approximately 27​,000 pupils.

A transnational system