The Diplomat
The European and Ibero-American Academy of Yuste Foundation has awarded the Charles V European Award to the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, for her “firm defense of the European integration process and the important strategic role of Europe in the international concert”.
With this, the Jury of the XIV edition of the Charles V European Award has wanted to award Merkel in “recognition of her long political career in the service of Europe, having been a firm defender of the European integration process and the important strategic role of Europe in the international concert”, as announced yesterday at a press conference by the General Director of External Action of the Regional Government of Extremadura and President of the Executive Committee of the Yuste Foundation, Rosa Balas, and the Director of the Yuste Foundation, Juan Carlos Moreno.
Merkel thus becomes the third woman to receive the Charles V European Award, after the former president of the European Parliament Simone Veil, who received the award in 2008; and the driving force behind the Erasmus program, Sofia Corradi, who received the award in 2016. It is also the second time that the award has gone to a chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany, after Helmut Kohl in 2006.
The laureate, after learning of this award, has sent the Foundation a text of thanks and recognition to the institution: “I am very honored to be awarded this year’s Charles V European Prize. I am very pleased to receive it at the award ceremony”, said Merkel. The solemn Charles V European Award ceremony will be held on October 14 at the Royal Monastery of Yuste in a ceremony presided over by King Philip VI, who will be accompanied by regional, national and international personalities, according to Juan Carlos Moreno.
The awarding of the Prize to Merkel coincides with her farewell as Chancellor after sixteen years at the head of the German government, Rosa Balas pointed out. “Merkel is a key figure in understanding the history of Europe in these last few decades in which the continent and the world have faced great economic, social and humanitarian challenges, Brexit, where for the first time a country has left the community club, and finally, the COVID-19 crisis, which is giving us the biggest and most serious pulse we could imagine”, she added.
The Yuste Foundation has been organizing the Charles V European Award since 1995, with the aim of recognizing personalities, initiatives, institutions and projects that have stood out for their commitment in favor of the European Union or for their contribution to the enhancement of Europe’s cultural, scientific or historical values. The people who have received this award so far are Jacques Delors (1995), Wilfried Martens (1998), Felipe González (2000), Mikhail Gorbachev (2002), Jorge Sampaio (2004), Helmut Kohl (2006), Simone Veil (2008), Javier Solana (2011), José Manuel Durão Barroso (2014), Sofia Corradi (2016), Marcelino Oreja Aguirre (2017), Antonio Tajani (2018) and the Council of Europe’s Cultural Itineraries project (2019).
