Absorption and magnetic circular dichroism (MCD) spectra of polycrystalline EuCl 3 .6H 2 O samples were recorded between 16 000 and 36 000 cm −1 at ambient temperature and at 77 K. A total of 104 crystal field transitions has been observed in the spectra. The MCD spectrum resembles the first derivative of the absorption spectrum, indicating the presence of (pseudo) A-terms. The advantage of MCD is the possibility of detecting quasi-degenerate crystal field levels, which are not resolved in the absorption spectrum. The coordination polyhedron around Eu 3+ is a distorted square antiprism (C.N.=8). In order to make the crystal field calculations more tractable, the real C 2 symmetry of the europium site is approximated by a C 2v symmetry. The energy levels of the 4f 6 configuration of Eu 3+ are parametrized in terms of 20 free ion parameters and 9 B q k crystal field parameters. J-mixing is taken into account.