Culture : EUPL – European Union Prize for Literature 2016. Christine Stevens

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Tibor Navracsics delivers a speech at the EU Literature Prize Ceremony and hands out prizes to the winners, in Brussels

Cultural and linguistic diversity is at the heart of the European Union Prize for Literature, says Tibor Navracsics European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport.

The Awards Ceremony for the 2016 winners took place on the 31st of May at the Concert Noble in Brussels.

Tibor Navracsics European Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport declared that “the European Union Prize for Literature honors new literary voices from across 37 European countries, regardless of nationality, age or language” .

Tibor Navracsics delivers a speech at the EU Literature Prize Ceremony and hands out prizes to the winners, in Brussels
Tibor Navracsics delivers a speech at the EU Literature Prize Ceremony
and hands out prizes to the winners, in Brussels

This year’s winners are talented authors from twelve countries: Tania Stupar-Trifunvic (Bosnie Herzegovine) ; Christophe Van Gerrewey (Belgium) ; Antonis Georgiou (Cyprus) ; Bjorn Rasmussen (Denmark) ; Pavo Matsin (Estonia) ; Selja Ahava (Finland) ; Nenad Joldeski (Macedonia) ; Benedict Wells (Germany) ; Gast Groeber (Luxembourg) ; Claudiu M. Florian (Romania) ; Jamins B. Frelih (Slovenia); Jesus Carrasco (Spain).

Tibor Navracsics delivers a speech at the EU Literature Prize Ceremony and hands out prizes to the winners, in Brussels
Tibor Navracsics delivers a speech at the EU Literature Prize Ceremony and hands out prizes to the winners, in Brussels

Tibor Navracsics goes on to say that “that culture has great social and economic value. It is about European identity and a common cultural heritage, languages, arts and literature. Europe is proud of its cultural diversity, and wants to promote it. This is why the EU helps artists to travel, works of art to be circulated, films to be distributed and books to be translated. Some authors say that having their works translated is even more rewarding than having them published, that their work is somehow set free – and made available to new readers, often bringing feedback as fresh inspiration for the author”.

The EUPL is supported by the EU’s Creative Europe programme. Creative Europe is the European Commission’s framework programme for support to the culture and audiovisual sectors. Succeeding the previous Culture Programme and the MEDIA programme, Ceative Europe aims at supporting Europe’s cultural and creative sectors.

The EUPL exists since 2009, when the European Commission in Brussels (in the person of the Commissioner for Education, Culture, Multilingualism and Youth) conducted as part of the Culture Programme a call for projects to launch a «Prize of the European Union for Literature» (European Union Prize for Literature – EUPL). The responsibility for managing the Prize had been entrusted to the three major professional organizations in the book trade: the European Booksellers Federation, the Federation of European Writers and the Federation of European Publishers.

Each year, the juries are set up by the three organizations in 11 or 12 of the 35 countries participating in the Cultural Programme of the European Union with the mission to honour «an emerging writer in the field of contemporary literature (fiction) in their country «. The new European talents are selected on the basis of criteria specified by the European Commission, namely essentially to have published between 2 and 4 books (novels and/or collections of short stories) and that one of these books has had to be published in less than 5 years.

Tibor Navracsics delivers a speech at the EU Literature Prize Ceremony and hands out prizes to the winners, in Brussels
Tibor Navracsics delivers a speech at the EU Literature Prize Ceremony
and hands out prizes to the winners, in Brussels

There are two other European prizes in the field of literature : namely the European Literature Prize which was established in 2005, crowning each year an outstanding literary corpus, representative of the European continent within the 47 countries of the Council of Europe ; and «European Book Prize», created in 2007 by the association Spirit of Europe, supported by a sponsorship committee chaired by Jacques Delors, ex-President of the European Commission (1985-1995), which aims to reward «a book expressing a vision of Europe and published in one of 27 countries during the past year. «

From: the European Commission; the EUPL