Vision for Europe Award explained

The Vision for Europe Award is an honour that has been bestowed annually since 1995 by the non-profit Edmond Israel Foundation in "recognition of outstanding achievements in taking Europe into the future."^[1]

Between 1995 and 2008, the award was presented to the recipient in a ceremony at the Edmond Israel Foundation building in Luxembourg City. Luxembourg's best-known sculptor Lucien Wercollier designed the statue presented to the recipients. The first Vision for Europe Award was given to Jacques Santer in 1995, the year he left his position as Prime Minister of Luxembourg to become President of the European Commission. The award honored his efforts to unite Europe into a single entity.

Since 2016, the Award is presented during the Prague European Summit. The statue is produced by the Czech glass manufacturer Preciosa.^[2]

Recipients

Year	Image	Choice	Notes
1995		Jacques Santer	at the time President of the European Commission and former Prime Minister of Luxembourg
1996		Jean-Luc Dehaene	Prime Minister of Belgium
1997		Helmut Kohl	Chancellor of Germany
1998		Jean-Claude Juncker	Prime Minister of Luxembourg
1999		Wim Duisenberg	first president of the European Central Bank and formerly Minister of Finance for the Netherlands
2000		Árpád Göncz	President of Hungary
2001	Not awarded
2002		Guy Verhofstadt	Prime Minister of Belgium
2003		Javier Solana	High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Secretary-General of both the Council of the European Union (EU) and the Western European Union (WEU) and former Secretary General of NATO.
2004	Not awarded
2005	Not awarded
2006		Angela Merkel	Chancellor of Germany
2007	Not awarded
2008		Jean-Claude Trichet	President of the European Central Bank and former governor of the Banque de France
2016		Wolfgang Wessels^[3]	Professor & Jean Monnet Chair, University of Cologne.
2017		Timothy Garton Ash	Historian and professor of European Studies at Oxford University
2018		Emily O'Reilly^[4] ^[5]	European Ombudsman

External links

• Vision for Europe website, https://web.archive.org/web/20090121180916/http://ei-foundation.lu/vision/index.htm

Notes and References

1. Web site: Vision for Europe . 9 April 2012 . https://web.archive.org/web/20090121180916/http://ei-foundation.lu/vision/index.htm . 21 January 2009 . dead .
2. Web site: Prague European Summit . preciosabeauty.com . 11 September 2019.
3. Web site: Vision for Europe Award 2016. Institute of International Relations. 30 January 2017.
4. Web site: Prague European Summit 2018 – Day 2 Summary . . praguesummit.eu . 11 September 2019.
5. Web site: Vision for Europe Speech . 20 June 2018 . ombudsman.europa.eu . 11 September 2019.