President Volodymyr Zelensky winner of the Charlemagne Prize

He rewards his commitment to European unification. Volodymyr Zelensky received the Charlemagne Prize during an official ceremony organized in Aix-la-Chapelle (Germany), at the end of the afternoon, Sunday 14 May. “Across Europe, the war has made one thing clear: Ukraine is part of our European family.said German Chancellor Olaf Scholz at the award ceremony. Russia’s war of aggression has brought the European Union and Ukraine closer together than ever before.”

Also present at the ceremony, the head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, also spoke: “President Zelensky and the people of Ukraine are fighting for the values ​​and for the obligation that this award embodies. In doing so, they are also fighting for our own freedom and our values. Democracy and the rule of law, freedom of expression and the freedom to create one’s own destiny”.

Mitterrand, Havel, Churchill…

This distinction, awarded each year in this city located in the west of Germany, was created in 1949 to promote European construction, after the destruction of the Second World War.

In 2022, the prize was awarded to three opponents of the Belarusian regime, Svetlana Tikhanovskaïa, Veronika Tsepkalo and Maria Kolesnikova. In the past, it has rewarded many Western leaders, such as former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Vaclav Havel, then President of Czechoslovakia and former French President François Mitterrand.