The creation of the institute was the fruit of a deliberate policy to re-orientate European law research in Toulouse towards a wider reflection on European integration, beyond the confines of a strictly economic perspective.
This led to the assembling of experts in the field of EU law, private international law, European finances law and comparative law.
The IRDEIC succeeded the IREDE in 2007.
The current institute includes:

 

• CEDRE (Centre for European Studies, Documentation and Research) whose activities cover institutional and substantive European law.
• CERFF (European Tax and Financial Research Centre), formerly CERF, to which the financial dimension has been added to its tax-based research.
• LIEu (International and European Laboratory) whose works revolve around the European legal area with a private international law perspective; it also carries out research into judicial and financial topics.
• CDC (Comparative Law Centre) which contributes the comparative method to the other teams.

 

Research programmes have been initiated within the IRDEIC which concentrate on the following issues: a new European governance, a new European normativity; a new European foreign policy; changes to European local finances; evolution of 21st-century tax systems; new dimensions and function for comparative law; new links between the law and the economy under a European law perspective.