•    Following the 1958 ‘Atoms for Peace’ Conference in Geneva, where the first results in controlled thermonuclear fusion were declassified, EURATOM decided to foster fusion research in the Community. •    European National Laboratories involved in fusion progressively became part of the EURATOM collaborative programme through ‘Contracts of Association’, and  quickly focused on magnetic confinement fusion. •   JET was first known as “la Proposition Pease”(Director of the Culham Laboratory) A. Schlüter (left) and C. Braams (right) seen here with D. Palumbo discussing the foundation of JET. •   Following progress of the Tokamak concept, invented by Russian scientists in the early sixties, in 1972 EURATOM and the Associated Laboratories decided to set up the Joint European Tokamak Working Group to define the objectives, the outline design and the main parameters of a large tokamak to be designed, constructed and operated within the framework of the European collaboration