Speaker Hendrik Brugman on the laureate:

‘During his life this man was a technician, diplomat, and author. He can be characterized in particular by brilliance, foresightedness and vitality. Based on firm conviction he is also a European world citizen, a liberal and a federalist. He is all these things not alternately but at the same time. Therefore I call him the provisional last Renaissance man, a “homo universale”. […] You, my dear friend Don Salvador, are the founding president of the Europe College. […] You dreamed of Brügge becoming the European Oxford.’