Brussels, 04/12/2006 (Agence Europe) - On 28 November, the weekly European Voice nominated its Europeans of the Year in several categories. The statesmen and -women nominated were José Manuel Barroso, German Chancellor Angela Markel, Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi (for the role played by Italy after the war in Lebanon), Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel and Croatian President Stjepan Mesic (for handing General Gotovina over to international justice). Nominees for Commissioner of the Year were Jacques Barrot, Neelie Kroes, Franco Frattini, Viviane Reding and Olli Rehn, and for MEP of the Year, EP President Josep Borrell, Evelyne Gebhardt, Sophie in't Veld, Martine Roure and Terry Wynn. In the “Diplomat of the Year” category, the following were among those nominated Erkki Tuomioja, President of the Council of the EU, Javier Solana and EU Representative to the Great Lakes Region Aldo Ajello, and among the nominees for “Campaigner of the Year” were MEP Cecilia Malmström (who campaigned for a single seat for the European Parliament), Romanian justice minister Monica Macovei (for combating corruption), Yvonne Watts (for setting a precedent at the European Court of Justice obliging her national health service to pay for a medical operation in another Member State) and British actor Colin Firth (who has championed developing countries in WTO negotiations). Among nominees for Businessman of the Year” were Josef Ackermann of Deutsche Bank, Wulf Bernotat of E.ON and Lakshmi Mittal of Mittal Steel. Nominated for “Journalist of the Year” were Frenchwomen Sara Daniel, Belgian Martine Vandemeulebroucke, Dane Nils Mulvad and Italian Guido Olimpio. In the “Achiever of the Year” category, the following were among the nominees: Slovenian finance minister Andrej Bajuk for taking his country into the euro zone (the first of the new Member States to do so), Jean-Claude Trichet and Nicolas Sarkozy, “for putting forward the clearest vision for the future of Europe yet to emerge from France”. Among the “Non-EU Citizen of the Year” were Kofi Annan, Mahmoud Abbas, Bill Gates, Alan Greenspan and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature Orhan Pamuk. (mg)