The European Union Receives the Princess Asturias Concord Award

The Princess of Asturias Foundation has announced that the 2017 Princess of Asturias Award for Concord will be awarded to the European Union. The European Union was chosen from a list of twenty-eight candidatures, from sixteen different countries, which had been nominated for the Award.

The Princess of Asturias Award for Concord is conferred on those “whose work constitutes an outstanding contribution at an international level to the defence and universality of human rights, the fostering and protection of peace, freedom, solidarity or world heritage or, in general, to the progress of humanity.”

The Award comprises a Joan Miró sculpture representing and symbolising the accolade, a cash prize of €50,000, a diploma and an insignia. It will be presented alongside the other 7 Awards made by the Foundation at a ceremony to be held in Oviedo during the second fortnight of October.

This is the final of the eight Princess of Asturias Awards to be bestowed this year, in what is now their 37th edition.

Announcing this award the Jury of the Foundation recalled the words of the European Union’s founding father, Robert Schuman, who stated on 9th May 1950 that “Europe will not be made all at once, or according to a single plan. It will be built through concrete achievements which first create a de facto solidarity.” This was his dream of a united Europe after one of the bloodiest periods in contemporary history.

2017 marks the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, and today the EU remains a unique model of supranational political integration based on the peaceful, progressive and free association of its members.