The Vision for Europe Award is an honour that has been bestowed annually since 1995 by the non-profit Edmond Israel Foundation in "recognition of outstanding achievements in taking Europe into the future."
Between 1995 and 2008, the award was presented to the recipient in a ceremony at the Edmond Israel Foundation building in Luxembourg City. Luxembourg's best-known sculptor Lucien Wercollier designed the statue presented to the recipients. The first Vision for Europe Award was given to Jacques Santer in 1995, the year he left his position as Prime Minister of Luxembourg to become President of the European Commission. The award honored his efforts to unite Europe into a single entity.
Since 2016, the Award is presented during the Prague European Summit. The statue is produced by the Czech glass manufacturer Preciosa.
Recipients
Year Image Choice Notes 1995 Jacques Santer at the time President of the European Commission and former Prime Minister of Luxembourg 1996 Jean-Luc Dehaene Prime Minister of Belgium 1997 Helmut Kohl Chancellor of Germany 1998 Jean-Claude Juncker Prime Minister of Luxembourg 1999 Wim Duisenberg first president of the European Central Bank and formerly Minister of Finance for the Netherlands 2000 Árpád Göncz President of Hungary 2001 Not awarded 2002 Guy Verhofstadt Prime Minister of Belgium 2003 Javier Solana High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and the Secretary-General of both the Council of the European Union (EU) and the Western European Union (WEU) and former Secretary General of NATO. 2004 Not awarded 2005 Not awarded 2006 Angela Merkel Chancellor of Germany 2007 Not awarded 2008 Jean-Claude Trichet President of the European Central Bank and former governor of the Banque de France 2016 Wolfgang Wessels Professor & Jean Monnet Chair, University of Cologne. 2017 Timothy Garton Ash Historian and professor of European Studies at Oxford University 2018 Emily O'Reilly European Ombudsman 2019 Mikuláš Dzurinda [https://praguesummit.eu/about/vision-for-europe-award/Vision for Europe Award, Prague european summit, July 19, 2025 Former Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Slovakia, President of the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies 2020 Margot Wallström Former First Vice-President of the European Commission and Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden 2020 Federica Mogherini Former High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission 2021 Borut Pahor President of Slovenia 2022 Karel Schwarzenberg Former Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic 2023 Věra Jourová Vice President of the European Commission for Values and Transparency
References
External links Vision for Europe website,