Speaker Carlo Azeglio Ciampi on the laureate:

‘This year’s Charlemagne Prize is a tribute, through the euro, to the ability of European peoples to turn their ideals and values—that are the expression of one civilisation to which all European nations have contributed—into shared institutions. At this momentous stage, the process of European unification appears to us in all its splendour. […] Ever since the beginning of the European adventure, the six states that signed the Treaty of Rome applied the guiding principle of a limited national sovereignty—in support of shared institutions having the task to exercise shared sovereignty powers—on the part of an open, not exclusive, group of states that were in the lead and constantly prepared for further advancement. […] In that sense, the creation of the euro is a starting point, as well as an attainment.’