In the summer of 1984, following discussions between Jean-Jaskold Gabszewicz, Louis Phlips, Jacques Thisse and Jean Waelbroeck to set up a European Economic Association, Louis Phlips, then of the Universit Catholique de Louvain in Louvain-la Neuve, approached several European collegues with such a plan. The proposal met with a sufficient positive response to call a meeting of potential founders. The group met on 7 December 1984 at the Brussels office of the European Cultural Foundation. The ECF had also made the necessary funds available. Louis Phlips presided a meeting that enthusiastically approved the idea of a European Economic Association. It set itself up as a Steering Committee and started to define purpose and activities of the new association. There would be an Annual Congress and European Workshops would be organised regularly. The European Economic Review, existing since 1969, seemed a natural choice for the journal of the Association. The internal organisation was discussed on the basis of statutes drafted by Anton Barten. A nominating committee was formed, consisting of Birgit Grodal, Peter Neary and Jacques Thisse, to prepare the election of the first President. The European Economic Association had started.

A second meeting of the Steering Committee was held on 3 and 4 May 1985, again in Brussels.  This time sponsored by the European Cultural Foundation and by the Belgian Ministry of Economic Affairs. In the meantime Jacques Dreze had been elected President, Louis Phlips, Secretary and Pietro Balestra, Treasurer. The offices of First Vice-President (President-Elect) and of Second Vice-President (Vice-President) were soon after the meeting occupied by Jnos Kornai and Anthony Atkinson, respectively. Statutes were put into their definitive shape. The Steering Committee transformed into a Council and brought up its strength to 30 elected members. It was formally decided to have an Annual Congress for the first time in August 1986. Its venue was to be Vienna . The structure of the Congress was established more or less along the same lines as still in force. Louis Phlips was to be its Programme Chairman. It was also agreed to let the European Economic Review become the official journal of the Association as of the beginning of 1986. Angar Sandmo and Peter Neary were to join the original editors, Jean Waelbroeck and Herbert Glejser, as editors of the EER.

On 20 and 21 July 1985 the Executive Committee met for the first time in the Belgian seaside resort of De Haan. It was happy to note that European Nobel Prize winners Hicks, Meade, Myrdal, Stone and Tinbergen were going to endorse the founding of the EEA in a letter to prospective members. A Finance Committee was set up to recruit "Founding Institutional Members", who would pledge $ 5 000 USD over the next five years. The Executive Committee selected Copenhagen as the 1987 Congress site, with Charles Wyplosz as the Programme Chairman.

A membership drive was started. Council members would approach their colleagues to become a "Founding Member". Early 1986 almost 900 Founding Members had joined up. After the Vienna Congress there were more than 1300 members. Since then membership has gone up and down and stands at more than 2500.

The Vienna Annual Congress was attended by more than 600 people, far exceeding the initial expectations. At the last congress, held in 2009 in Barcelona, there were over 1100 EEA members who attended.  Congresses have, since then, been held almost all over Europe. There is an understanding with the European Standing Committee of the Econometric Society to coordinate the choice of venue to possibly have the EEA meeting and the Econometricians' meeting in the same location or nearby. The supply of papers has been steadily increasing.  Always, quite a few non-Europeans have been on the programme, either to give an invited paper or to present a contributed paper.

The original plan to have regular EEA workshops failed because of lack of adequate finance. However, the EEA became in 1989 a joint organiser of the International Seminar on Macroeconomics, together with its founders: the Maison des Sciences de l' Homme in Paris and the U.S National Bureau of Economic Research. every year it brings together a group of European and North-American macro-economists. A selection of the papers given at the seminar is published as a special volume of the EER.

A very succesful series of Summer Schools started in 1990, funded by the Stimulation Programme for Economic Science of the European Commission. These Summer Schools involved about 20 doctoral students and 5 teachers. They covered large topics, both from a theoretical and empirical point of view, with emphasis on their European dimension. The first Summer School, held in Lisbon , close after the Congress there, was on "Unemployment in Open Economies".

The organisation of the Summer School is one of the tasks of the Standing Committee, for Student Affairs, established at the 1987 Copenhagen Congress. This Committee administers the EEA student travel grants for attendance at the annual congress. It organises a job market session as part of the congress. A Students' Newsletter is published on the net announcing amongst others: job openings (E-JOE), post-doctoral fellowship programmes, specialised conferences and seminars, etc...

The regime change in Eastern Europe in 1989 promised easier contacts between economists from East- and West- Europe. A new approach was in order. In 1990 the EEA set up a standing Committee for Eastern European Affairs, with Michael Kaser as chairman and as members economists from the East as well as from the West. It organised panels on transition economics at the Cambridge and Dublin meetings and tried to upgrade the quality of papers submitted by economists from the East. Participation of economists from Eastern and Central Europe was supported by the ACE programme of the European Commission. Since the currencies of most countries in question were convertible the system of blocked accounts, which had anyway a limited coverage, was abolished. When Michael Kaser in 1993 resigned as chairman of the Standing Committee for Eastern European Affairs, it was decided to step down this committee for the time being. Instead the Council decided to waive the registration fee for congress participants from ECE with a paper on the programme.

In 1991 the EEA created a medal to be awarded once every two years to the author(s) of an outstanding article published in the European Economic Review , while in recent years, the Journal of the European Economic Association (JEEA). It has been named the Hicks-Tinbergen medal to make it clear that the EEA stands for both theoretical and empirical work in economics in Europe . It was awarded for the first time in 1992 at the Dublin Congress.

In 1992 an agreement was worked out between the EEA and the editors of Economic Policy to allow EEA members to subscribe to this biannual publication at a reduced price in exchange of financial support by the EEA. The Association also obtained some control over the editorial process of Economic Policy. Over 500 members avail themselves to this opportunity.

In the first ten years of its existence the European Economic Association has gone through a process of rapid expansion of activities. There was a demand for these. Thanks to the enthusiastic co-operation of Officers and Council Members and the financial support from the private as well as from the public sector supply was able to meet this demand.