The European Press Prize 2022 Award Ceremony
On June 2, the European Press Prize community will gather in Madrid for our annual Award Ceremony, which will mark the 10th anniversary of the creation of the Prize. During the Ceremony we will announce the winners of our 2022 Awards. Among the speakers at the event will be the Ukrainian journalist Olga Rudenko, editor-in-chief at The Kyiv Independent.
Since 2013, the yearly European Press Prize Award Ceremonies have been held in Berlin, Warsaw, Budapest, Prague, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and London. After two years in which the Covid-19 pandemic forced the Prize winners announcement online, the 2022 Award Ceremony goes back to being an occasion to bring our community together in person and, this year, Madrid will be our location.
This Ceremony at La Casa Encendida will be a moment of celebration for this year’s European Press Prize winners. It will be hosted by Clara Jiménez Cruz, co-founder of the winner of our Innovation Award 2021 Maldita.es.
A special speaker: Olga Rudenko
Present at the event as a speaker and as a guest will be Ukrainian journalist Olga Rudenko, editor-in-chief of The Kyiv Independent.
The Kyiv Independent is an award-winning media start-up launched in November 2021 by the former editorial team of the Kyiv Post. Since Putin’s invasion on February 24, the Kyiv Independent has become the world’s primary source for reliable English-language journalism on that war.
On June 2nd, Olga will speak about the current reality and possible futures of European journalism: where we stand, where we want to go, and how we get there.
Ten years of awarding excellent European journalism
The European Press Prize Award Ceremony 2022 will mark ten years since the creation of the Prize. Ten years ago, in 2012, representatives of seven independent European foundations with strong media connections met in De Balie, a venue for contemporary arts, politics, and culture in Amsterdam. With a shared concern for the state of the public debate and access to quality information, these organisations founded the European Press Prize. Since then, the Prize has been devoted to finding excellent journalism in Europe and beyond; to celebrating, supporting, and protecting it.
In its first ten years of existence, the Prize has collected almost 6,000 entries. Among them, are projects and journalists that, with their stories, shaped and represented the recent history of Europe.
Our new Judge: Can Dündar
This year, our Panel of Judges welcomed a new member: Turkish journalist Can Dündar.
Can Dündar is a Turkish journalist, documentary filmmaker, and book author. He was editor-in-chief of the Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet, and was sentenced in absentia to 27 years in prison after publishing a story on Turkish intelligence’s arms trafficking to Syrian radical Islamists. After being arrested in 2015, spending three months in jail, and surviving an assassination attempt, Dündar fled his home country and settled in Germany. Now, he is editor-in-chief of the bilingual journalistic platform Özgürüz and a columnist for Die Zeit.
Last April he joined us in Perugia during the International Journalism Festival 2022 and told us why he thinks awards are important for journalists.
This year’s European Press Prize was also the last one seeing the participation of Sylvie Kauffmann, editorial director of the French newspaper Le Monde, in our Panel of Judges. We want to thank her for her invaluable contribution to the European Press Prize.
Interested in covering the event?
We are open for press accreditation and inquiry over single interviews. Contact [email protected] for expressions of interest. The seats number is limited due to the rules of the hosting location.
Russian journalists will remain part of the European Press Prize
Following the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Federation decided to withdraw its membership in the Council of Europe. This would mean, following the rules of entry for the European Press Prize, that Russian citizens cannot participate in our awards for quality journalism.
We will, though, accept their submissions anyway.
In his speech announcing the creation of the Council of Europe, the then French Minister Robert Schuman said: “The Council of Europe is, to be sure, the laboratory in which experiments in European co-operation are conducted.”
The council of Europe was created, in 1949, to respond to thirty years of wars and divisions in Europe, conflicts that had only brought misery and hatred. Conflicts that were now over, to make space for a prolonged period of peace in the Old Continent.
It was in those years, after WWII, that Europe found itself, and Europeans found each other. Barriers were brought down – small ones, and big ones – culminating in the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989.
In the last 70 years, European journalism flourished. The number of cross-border projects kept increasing, and with the internet, people across the continent have been able to access news produced anywhere in Europe.
The Prize, a creature of this new European unity
Amidst all this, the European Press Prize was founded. Seven independent media organisations created it, ten years ago, and we most certainly are an example of what Europe has become: a union based on shared cultures, hopes, and dreams.
The Prize, exactly like the Europe Schumann described, started as an experiment. Can we create an award that connects all the journalists of the Council of Europe, in order for them to grow stronger together?
We discovered, over the past ten years, that this could be done.
War will not change this
But then the war came, and the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict brought Russia outside the Council of Europe.
And not only outside that. Many prestigious organisations decided to ban Russian professionals from participating in contests, tournaments, and events. A form of sanctioning that is supposed to hurt the Russian government, stripping it from its international presence and voice.
But such sanctions end up hurting the professionals themselves first.
The sanctions might also hurt the very idea these professionals have of the world around them. Returning to our laboratory metaphor: co-operation ‘experiment’ failed, away with Russia.
It cannot be this way! Laboratories and experiments are by definition imperfect, and if every important project had been interrupted for retaliatory reasons, we would not have achieved the many great things that we did achieve, along with our European History.
Therefore, the European Press Prize decided that this awful, unjustified war that the Russian government brought upon the Ukrainian people, will not deprive Russian journalists and media outlets of their chance to be part of our community.
We had already added Belarus – which is also not part of the Council of Europe – to our list of eligible countries, and we will do the same with Russia. Russian journalists and activists will be allowed to submit their work for the European Press Prize, and Russian cartoonists will be able to take part in the European Cartoon Award.
These difficult times call for excellent, extraordinary journalism, may it come from Ukraine, Russia, or wherever else.
We need it, and we are here to support it.