Miss Europe

Miss Europe is a beauty pageant with female contestants from all over Europe. It was established in February 1927 by Fanamet, the European distributor of Paramount, as a one-off event where the winner was to star in a film directed by Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. After the initial twelve-person jury couldn't decide between 10 contestants, a runoff election was held where Murnau chose the winner. Murnau ended up choosing Štefica Vidačić of Yugoslavia as the winner and the first ever Miss Europe.[1][2] Miss Europe was later re-established in December 1928 by French journalist Maurice de Waleffe (1874-1946[3]), who also created, in 1920, what by 1927 had become the Miss France pageant. Miss Europe, under de Waleffe, was first held at the Paris Opera with participants from 18 countries. The first contest under de Waleffe did not occur until February 1929.

Miss Europe 1954-55, Christel Schaack

The contest was interrupted by the onset of World War II but was later re-established, after de Waleffe died, by Mr. Roger Zeigler (of the Moulin Rouge) and Claude Berr who founded the Mondial Events Organization (MEO). Most contestants won their respective national contests for Miss World, and participated as supplemental training for their respective competitions. Berr died in 1981 and Roger Zeigler sold the license for the pageant to Endemol France, part of the Dutch television production company Endemol, in 2003. The competition was announced for 2007, 2008 & 2009 in places like Moscow and Beirut but they didn't occur and they've stopped after 2006.

In 2016, the pageant was "revived" by the newly formed Miss Europe Organization originally headquartered in London but then later moved to Edinburgh. Apparently there is a connection with the previous organizers as the winner of the 2016 edition wore the same crown (tiara/diadem) as her three predecessors.

The current Miss Europe titleholder is Lara Jalloh from France, who was crowned in the Four Seasons Hotel George V Paris in Paris, France on December 22, 2020.