Awarded annually, the Jean Monnet Prize for European Integration recognizes and celebrates achievements that contribute to supporting and strengthening European integration. The aim of the prize is to honor the memory and life achievements of Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of the European project.
It does so by rewarding talented individuals or groups having contributed to supporting or strengthening European Integration through a project they designed and implemented. The 2020 Jean Monnet Prize is organized under the patronage of the European Parliament and with the support of our pro-European partners.
Metropole won this year’s Jean Monnet Award with our project Home Is Where the Herz Is. We are incredibly proud and honored to be awarded this prize.
We would particularly like to thank our entire team as well as the brave and incredibly talented creators from Viennese communities who made the first three issues possible – and are working on many more to come. If you haven’t had a look yet, make sure to check out:
- The Romanian issue
- The Hungarian issue
- The Polish issue
In the words of the announcement:
EuropeanConstitution.eu awards the 2020 Jean Monnet Prize for European Integration to “Home Is Where the Herz Is,” a project aimed at giving a voice to Vienna’s immigrants communities, organized by the Austrian media outlet Metropole.
Our project was chosen as the winner among 70 projects from all across the EU, “attesting of the vitality of citizens’ engagement in favour of a more united and integrated Europe despite the on-going health crisis,” the statement further said.
The second place goes to Mia Europo, a French-based monthly periodical helping children and adolescents discover Europe. The third place goes to the Voters Without Borders team for their European Citizens’ Initiative aimed at granting EU citizens with full electoral rights wherever they live in the EU.
We congratulate the runner-ups and all other projects that applied and are honored and happy to be in the company of so many creative and impactful people all across our continent.
More About Our Project
As seen by the association:
We argue that we must get to know one another and learn from each other – immigrants from locals and local from immigrants. This is why EuropeanConstitution.eu awards the 2020 Jean Monnet Prize for European Integration to “Home is Where the Herz is,” a project aimed at giving a voice to Vienna’s immigrants communities.
”Home Is Where the Herz Is” is the brainchild of the Austrian media outlet Metropole and aims at giving a voice to Vienna’s largest immigrant communities, from Romania, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, Germany, Bulgaria, Syria, Turkey, Croatia, and Bosnia.
And in our own words:
“What moves the more than 770,000 Viennese (out of a total of 1.9 million) who were born abroad and chose to relocate across borders, cultures and language barriers to live here?”
Project Lead Benjamin Wolf
“This is what our project set out explore. European integration turned Vienna once more into a hub of Central and Eastern Europe.” says Benjamin Wolf, Project Lead. “We aim to spark a conversation across communities, in people’s own voices, to show how Europe grows together – one city at a time.”
In order to create this conversation, we at Metropole organized countless hours of workshops and cultural exchanges and will issue, between September 2020 and July 2021, ten printed publications (in addition to its own magazine), provide social media content and videos, and organize monthly offline get-togethers.
The content comes from young Viennese journalists with roots in these communities, supported and guided by the Metropole team.
“Our great discovery in this project is the extent to which European integration is already happening all around us.”
Dardis McNamee, Editor-in-Chief & Publisher of Metropole
“What we hope is that we are helping, as Jean Monnet might have said, to ‘create’ the Europe we want to live in. The Prize tells us we are on the right track,” sums up Dardis McNamee, Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Metropole.
European integration is about the conversation, about talking to each other. This is what our project is about: The people you know are your neighbors and possibly your friends.
Margaret Childs, CEO & Publisher of Metropole
Helping build bridges between communities in one of Europe’s most cosmopolitan cities, this project is also a testament that we can all be actors of this cross-border conversation and contribute to European integration. “The media has a unique voice,” says Louis Drounau, founder of EuropeanConstitution.eu, “and we were impressed by Metropole’s way to place this voice at the service of a better understanding between people and between communities.”
The Association
EuropeanConstitution.eu was established as a non-profit association dedicated to promoting the adoption of a European constitution, European federalism as an organizing principle for our institutions, and European integration in general.
In their own words:
Europe is our past and present, and it is our conviction that it is also our future.
Not only are we bound by a common European culture and history – and therefore form a common European people –, but we increasingly face challenges that none of us, as European nations, can solve separately. Our ability to ensure a peaceful and prosperous future for ourselves and coming generations depends on our ability to come together.
EuropeanConstitution.eu was founded on the belief that a common constitution was a cornerstone element for the realisation of a united Europe, founded on stable and lasting ground.
The Prize
EuropeanConstitution.eu takes a broad view of European integration and believe it is as much about the people than about institutions. Many projects can therefore be considered to contribute to European integration or promote the European spirit.
In their own words:
You bring European citizens together across borders? Apply! You create or facilitate exchange programmes within the EU? Apply! You contribute to language learning or cultural encounters? Apply! Your project promotes the discovery of European history or shared knowledge about our heritage? Apply!
We believe that people’s imagination and creativity are endless; this is why we are opening wide the range of projects we can support. If your project relates to the EU, we want to hear about it!
