Speaker King Juan Carlos I. on the laureate:

‘We would like to thank the professor of international law at the University of Cologne; as the director of the Judiciary Institute of the European Communities at this university he actively affected the formation of the structural laws of the united Europe. […] We give our sincere recognition to the politician Karl Carstens who, as a Christian Democratic delegate and later as the president of the German Parliament, held fast to his high European ideals.’