Speaker Jean-Claude Juncker on the laureate:

‘Javier Solana is a professor of solid state physics. Since becoming the high representative, chief diplomat of the European Union, he—a solid state physicist—looks after fragile states, fragile regions and destroyed interrelationships. He does this in the Near East, in Africa—keywords Darfur and Congo—he does this in Asia, in Central Asia, in Russia, he did this in the Ukraine, and of course in the Balkans as well as many other places on earth. By having done this and by doing this he gives Common Foreign and Security Policy a face. He not only gives European Foreign Policy a face but Europe itself; a face that the world sees and recognizes.’