In the mid 1990's when Karsten Köhler was President of the Fédération Allemande de Pétanque (DPV) and Flemming Jensin was President of the Fédération Danoise de Pétanque (DPF) they worked together at the International North Sea Pétanque Tournament (INSPT). They agreed that it was a shame the World Championships for Women and Juniors only took place every two year so they had the idea of creating a European Federation to have the opportunity of a European Championship every two years for women and juniors in the opposite year of the World Championships.

In 1997 Jan Sjölander from Sweden and Flemming Jensin started the Euro-Cup for club teams, then in 1998 France invited teams to a kind of European Championship for Youngsters in Dijon.

Karsten and Flemming could see that the French Federation would support something for Europe, and that France was willing to host the foundation of the Confédération Européenne de Pétanque (CEP) in January 1999 in Strasbourg.

The first official European Championship for Juniors took place in Liège, Belgium in 2000, where we had a significant support from the Belgium Pétanque Federation and in particular the President Roger Petermanns.  The French Pétanque Federation helped us again with the 1st. European Championship for women in 2001 held in Strasbourg, since then we have organised, every other year, a European Championship for both the women and juniors  and from 1998 the Euro-Cup competition every year.

At the 2005 European Championship for Women held in Denmark, the CEP Board asked the member Federations if they were interested in a "new" tournament for young people (age 18-22) called the "Espoirs". The idea was to offer something for the players, who became 18 years old, but were too young, and not experienced enough to go direct to the "open" national team.  We wanted to encourage them to continue in our sport.  Every Federation thought it was a very good idea, and the CEP started the Espoirs competition for both Women and Men in 2007. The finals in April 2008 were played in France.  The next Espoirs championship takes place this year (2011) and then will continue every two years.

Similarly in 2009 after discussions with our member Federations the CEP Board introduced the 1st European Championship for Men, this was held in Nice, France (2009) and coincided with the FIPJP's decision to restrict the World Championship to qualification from the Confederations.  The allocation for Europe was 24 nations and so it was a natural choice to use the Mens Championship as a qualification event for the FIPJP's World Championship.

In 2009 the CEP Board also created the "fixed dates" annual calendar to help our member Federations plan their pétanque year.  The Euro-Cup will be played in groups in week 30, the 1/4 finals in week 40, and the semi-finals and the finals in week 48 every year.

Every two years there are "fixed dates" for the Espoirs, the qualification round will be in week 12 and the finals will be in week 42, all in the same year.

To date there have been 3 Presidents for the CEP:
Karsten Köhler, Germany (1999-2001)
Gerard Schneider, Luxembourg (2001 - 2004)
Flemming Jensin, Denmark (2004 -     )