The Euromaidan movement was one of the three contenders for the Andrei Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought 2014. However, contrary to the expectations of many, leaders of the European Parliament’s factions decided a few days ago, by a secret ballot, to confer the prize on Denis Mukwege, a gynecologist from the Democratic Republic of Congo, for his struggle for women’s rights. Announcing the winner, EP President Martin Schulz emphasized that this decision had not been made against Euromaidan. The prize fund is 50,000 euros from the European Parliament’s budget.
The head of the European Parliament’s press service, Marjory Van Den Broeke, noted that, under the procedure, candidates for the prize are nominated by MEPs at a meeting of the foreign relations, human rights, and development committees. “At first, three candidates were short-listed by a secret ballot. And recently, faction groups gathered together and chose the winner by consensus,” Van Den Broeke said. In her words, as a courtesy to the Euromaidan movement, its representatives were invited to visit a plenary session in Strasbourg this week. Next month Ukrainian activists will take part in the award ceremony. “All the three candidates are worthy of this prize. But we had to make a choice sooner or later. An EP delegation will also go to Azerbaijan to visit the third candidate [Leila Yunus. – Ed.],” the EP spokesperson emphasized.
According to media reports, this time representatives of several EP factions opposed awarding this prize to Euromaidan. Why? Roland Freudenstein, deputy director of the Martens Center in Brussels, explained this as follows to The Day: “A dilemma came up before the voting – to give the prize to a concrete individual “for a concrete contribution” or to Euromaidan, a movement that involves a lot of people. The majority of EPP members favored giving the award to Euromaidan. But this turned out to be not enough. In the long run, during a secret-ballot vote, those who wanted the prize to be given to an individual for concrete achievements got the upper hand.”
