For the first time, the Charlemagne Prize Association has decided to honour not an individual or a group of persons, but an object. You have chosen to pay tribute to "the euro β our money".
For more than a decade now, monetary union has been a focus of public attention and a major issue of public debate. The depth of feeling generated by the euro, whether enthusiasm or hostility, has been far greater than what we are used to in this typically unglamorous field of economic management that is monetary policy. In fact, a lot of the attention gained by the euro was and is directed not so much at the currency itself, but more at the underlying political vision, of which it has become the symbol.
By accepting today the Charlemagne Prize on behalf of the euro, I would like to pass on the credit for it to those who forged that vision of Europe and turned it into reality. The vision of a united Europe was born, let us not forget, from a desire for peace and prosperity in a continent which was so often divided by internecine conflict, and which embroiled the rest of the world in two wars within two generations.
It would be inaccurate to say that the vision of a united Europe was born solely out of the horrors of the First and Second World Wars. It existed long beforehand. But significantly, it was from these two conflicts that the founding fathers of the current process of European integration found the strength to succeed where earlier visionaries had failed.
In the s, an Austrian diplomat, Count Coudenhove-Kalergi, emerged as the founder of the European movement. He remarked that "even more than a common history , it is a common destiny that makes the union of the people of Europe a necessity". Incidentally, and unsurprisingly, he went on to become the first person to receive the Charlemagne Prize. And as Aristide Briand, the French statesman, later pointed out, it is the mutual vulnerability of the people of Europe β if only because of the geography of our continent β which creates the conditions for solidarity , and the pressing need for mutual confidence.
