BELGIUM
Opened in December 2004, the Centre Jean Gol is, at one and the same time, the guardian of the archives of the Reformist Movement and a number of its directors; an interdisciplinary library boasting over 4,000 volumes (‘seminal’ Liberal writings but also less well-known works); a design office; a think tank and research unit; a publisher of numerous collections; a proactive political force; a centre for training the Reformist Movement’s representatives; and an organiser of events, seminar, conferences and symposiums.
The Centre Jean Gol’s objective is to generate discussions on important social issues, thereby enabling the Reformist Movement to promote new ideas as part of a message that is accessible to all. In other words, the Centre Jean Gol allows the Reformist Movement to express itself as a vital creative force.
Apart from reference works on Liberalism, the Centre Jean Gol publishes ‘Cahiers’, the fruit of an interdisciplinary discussion process involving political authorities and experts from academic and socio-economic spheres or from civil society. It updates a database of electoral results since the early 1990s, from which it produces in-depth analyses. It also places itself at the disposal of the Reform Movement’s elected representatives to carry out surveys and work on specific election projects.
Finally, the Centre Jean Gol has a website, designed to serve as a communication tool for the activities and publications of the centre. It offers online access to our library catalogue and to the inventory of our archives; the option to download certain parts of our publications free of charge; a ‘Liberal Portal’ providing several hundred links to other websites (Liberal or otherwise) of interest; plus a section entitled ‘La Pensée Libérale’, which given access to analyses of major liberal works, bibliographical references, etc.