Early history of the European Journal of Neurology. A mirror of the evolution of Europe after 1989

This paper retraces the early history of the European Journal of Neurology (EJN), as it is about to enter its 30th year. It describes how our discipline organized itself during the latter part of the 20th century in Europe. In some ways, the creation and the evolution of the journal parallel the process of unification of Europe in its current form in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It started as a new journal with no impact factor and no indexation. It grew progressively thanks to the support of the European Federation of Neurological Societies (EFNS) and from the European scientific community The progressive merging of EFNS with the European Society of Neurology and the creation of the European Academy of Neurology were essential for reaching the current prominence of EJN within neurological publishing and for making it the widely heard official voice of European neurology.