In 1955, to circumvent the prohibition of commercial broadcasting in France after the
Second World War, Europe n° 1 was established in the
Saarland, a German state that borders
France and
Luxembourg. Transmissions were not legally authorised, however, until France's post-war administration of the Saarland ceased and sovereignty returned to
West Germany in 1957; so, during its first two years (1955–1957), under the direction of
Sebastian Kralik, who had defected from
Radio Luxembourg, Europe n° 1 was a
pirate radio station. In 1959 the French government bought part of the broadcasting corporation, and this interest was administered today by the
Lagardère Group. All programming has always been produced in
Paris. For the few parts of France who can't receive the FM signal,
longwave broadcast still exists : the programme feed is transferred over ISDN lines to the transmitting station situated on the territory of the villages of
Berus and
Felsberg in the
Saarland,
Germany. From its beginning, Europe n°1's priorities were two-fold: first, news and cultural information with an emphasis on eyewitness accounts rather than an announcer with a script; second, shows aimed at establishing bonds with listeners, including plays,
contests, informal talk,
popular music, and
street-level politics. In both respects, it was a departure from radio formats of the day. In the 1960s, Europe 1 pioneered a new tone in French radio.
Salut les copains became an icon of popular culture and the
baby boom generation. Europe 1 played a role in the
May 68 political crisis by being the principal source of information untainted by government sanction; it was nicknamed "barricade radio". In the 1970s, President
Giscard d'Estaing criticized its "mocking" tone. When the industrialist
Jean-Luc Lagardère (mass media and military) became president of Europe 1 group, some feared the network might lose its independent point of view. Europe 1 also became a supplementary active member of the
European Broadcasting Union in 1978 and an active member in 1982. Since the 1980s, Europe 1 has experienced decreases in audience, and average age of listeners has steadily increased. Both can be traced to the proliferation of FM radio, after socialist President François Mitterrand made FM private radio legal in 1981. In 1986, for equality, the regulation authorities gave FM frequencies to Europe 1 and other peripheral radios still emitting from outside France. A network of Europe 1 FM transmitters was established within France. They later had to be shared with
Europe 2. In the 1990s, Europe 1 became a news and talk network.
Jean-Pierre Elkabbach became president in 2005. He was dismissed by the CSA (Comité de Surveillance de l'Audiovisuel) after announcing the death of Pascal Sevran prematurely in June 2008 and was replaced by
Alexandre Bompard, former Director of the Sports at
Canal+. In the 1990s, Europe 1 was France's fifth most popular network, with the other four being
RTL (radio-television Luxembourg),
France Inter (state-owned, general),
NRJ (music) and
France Info (state-owned, news). Then the right-wing media mogul
Vincent Bolloré took over the station in January 2022. ==Programming==