The Institutum was founded and led by Michiel (Michael) Van Notten, a Dutch lawyer and intellectual, in the late 1970s until his death in 2002.
One of its most influential efforts was publishing Professor Pascal Salin's, L'unité monétaire européenne : au profit de qui?
This work provided the impetus for a Conference held in Brussels organized by the Institutum on European Monetary Union and Currency Competition at which papers were presented by Salin, Hayek and fellow Nobel Prize laureate in economics Milton Friedman, along with Leonard Liggio, Pedro Schwartz, Lawrence White and others in the field of libertarian thought and economics.
[2] Although these arguments were unsuccessful in halting European monetary union and the eventual adoption of the Euro, the warnings of the instability which European monetary union would create, would ultimately gain widespread credence decades later after the predictions contained in the book became reality.
Van Notten also represented the Institutum by regularly lecturing on the virtues of liberty and limited government.