Last year The Voice was invited to attend one of the most important culture events of the European Union - European Book Prize Award. We were lucky to write an article about it and even managed to personally handle a copy of the new issue to Mr. Barroso, acting President of the European Commission. On Wednesday, 10th December2009, the European Parliament once again opened its doors to this cultural event with high political weight.

It is a unique award given annually to the books about Europe and the European Union, published in one of 27 member-countries of the EU. Its main idea, as it is explained on the official website of the award http://www.livre-europeen.eu/, is to promote European values and to contribute to the understanding of the European Union by its citizens. The first award took place in 2007 and it was a big success of its founders.
The event is organized under the patronage of special committee headed by Jacques Delors, former President of the European Commission. He opened the evening with a short introduction about the history of the Prize and obstacles on the path of European integration. He knows better than anybody else that European integration was never an easy process because his presidency in the commission within 1985-1995 fell on the years of crucial reforms of Europe with Maastricht Treaty come into force in 1993. Mr. Delors himself was responsible for important budgetary reforms that laid foundations for creation of the single market. He explained that in spite of all difficulties the success of the EU is obvious as there are plenty of successful examples of integration including the Erasmus program. The readers of Voice would most probably agree with this statement as many of them are Erasmus students who came to Leuven from different parts of Europe and other countries thanks to this program. The Erasmus experience is one of the best memories in their lives.
European Book Prize is undoubtedly another successful story. It is a kind of story that has no winners and losers. It does not only motivate people to write about Europe, because hardly anyone would do it especially for a money prize. Nevertheless, it motivates people to learn more about Europe while writing the books and while reading them. Coming back to the event, the evening continued with the speeches made by other top-ranked representatives of the European Union. For example, Pal Schmidt, Vice-President of European Parliament focused on the importance of books in our life saying that “Books give answers for the decades of life”. Of course, the speakers could not keep away from mentioning the Lisbon Treaty that was characterized by one of the speakers as “an instrument for Europe to play a role that everybody expects us to play in the world.” All said about the EU and its integration was very relevant to the main issue of the evening – the book award. As it was explained during the speeches, Europe is more than a political and economical Union; it’s a mixture of cultures that should enrich each other.
The winners for 2009 are “Gottland” written by representative of Poland Mariusz Szcygiel for “books” category and “L’Europe pour les nuls” by French Sylvie Goulard – for “essays” category.
Mr. Szcygiel commented on his book that “there are so many things happening in our life that we no longer need fiction books”. Thus, his book is based on the real-life events. The guidance written by Sylvie Goulard is also a real-life book that would help all “dummies” (“L’Europe pour les nulls” is a book published in a series of famous books “The complete idiot’s guide” in French) of the European Union. As she commented on the prize distribution ceremony, there is too often a substantial lack of information especially about such complicated structure as the EU.
After cocktails all guests were invited to the Theatre Varia to express appreciation to both winners of the award and to enjoy the spectacular performance prepared specially for this evening.
Who knows, may be one day the books written by KU Leuven students would be shortlisted for this Award because as Jacques Delors said “Europe is a treasury, full of ideas”. |