Brussels, 11/12/2008 (Agence Europe) - The European Book Prize has been awarded to an essay by Tony Judi entitled 'Postwar' by a jury chaired by Jorse Semprun. From the 88 works in the competition, the European Book Prize Support Committee selected a shortlist of ten. Alongside Postwar, the other two prize-winners were 'Pourquoi l'Europe' by Thomas Ferenczi and 'Ach, Europa' by Jurgen Habermas.
At the prize-giving ceremony on Wednesday evening at the European Parliament headquarters in Brussels, speeches were made by the President of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Pottering, the President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, the High Representative for foreign and security policy, Javier Solana, the President of the Socialist group at the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, and the winner of the 2007 European Book Prize, Guy Verhofstadt, who paid tribute to recently deceased Bronislaw Geremek and Robert Picht, who had written an essay that had made it to the shortlist, 'Visions d'Europe'.
The significance of culture in the European project was reaffirmed by the speakers. Pottering said that books were memory and without memory there could not be a future. United Europe needs symbols and the Book Prize is one of them, he added. Tony Judt was unable to attend the ceremony for health reasons but gave a video message in which he stressed the historical and cultural characteristics of European countries and what united them despite their differences. The artistic value of Judt's essay was noted. It is not propaganda in any way but a work of great literary value that helps readers understand the true meaning of Europe. (F.R. trans fl)