The EV50, Europeans of the Year in 2004

Date: 23/09/04

Commissioner of the Year

Frits Bolkestein - internal market, for being prepared to take on national governments in the cause of free markets and economic liberalism, with some refreshingly plain speaking

Pascal Lamy - trade, for not giving up on the Doha round of trade negotiations despite resistance from his own country

Mario Monti - competition, for his calm persistence in applying EU competition law in the face of some voluble and excitable opposition

Günter Verheugen - enlargement, for rising to the challenge of selling the EU's biggest-ever enlargement to the citizens of both old and new member states

António Vitorino - justice and home affairs, for his work in shaping the EU's sensitive justice and home affairs agenda

MEP of the Year

Johanna Boogerd-Quaak (NL) - rapporteur on the EU-US agreement on Passenger Name Records, for leading the Parliament's most controversial challenge to the European Commission and the Council of Ministers

Daniel Cohn-Bendit (D) - for his part in making the Greens the first genuinely pan-European political party with supranational lists for the European Parliament elections

Klaus Hänsch (D) and Elmar Brok (D) - jointly nominated for their combined efforts in defending the powers of the European Parliament, particularly over the EU budget, during the final negotiations on the draft constitution

Hans-Gert Pöttering (D) - for asserting the importance of the European Parliament by insisting that the next European Commission president be of the party that was most successful in the June elections

Statesman of the Year

Bertie Ahern - Irish taoiseach, for resurrecting and resolving the negotiations on the EU constitution

Joschka Fischer, Jack Straw and Dominique de Villepin - foreign ministers of Germany and UK, and French former foreign minister, now interior minister, jointly nominated for their diplomatic initiative to curb Iran's nuclear activities

Mehmet Ali Talat - prime minister of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, for persuading his citizens to back the Annan plan for unification of the island

Diplomat of the Year

Anne Anderson - Irish permanent representative to the EU, for her work during the Irish presidency which received universal acclaim

Paddy Ashdown - high representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, for raising the credibility of EU foreign and security policy

Michel Barnier - French foreign minister, for instructing his country's ambassadors to introduce some humility and build alliances with EU partners

Christoph Heusgen and Robert Cooper - Council of Ministers' members, jointly nominated as the driving forces behind the EU's security strategy

Visionary of the Year

Pedro Almodovar - maker of films that challenge social taboos, the latest of which, Bad Education, was a critical and popular success

Francis Crick, who died this year - co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, whose work opened up vast swathes of research in genomics and biotechnology

Timothy Garton Ash - historian and author of Free World: Why a crisis of the West reveals an opportunity for our time, for putting forward a vision of a better America and a better Europe, working together

Bronislaw Geremek MEP - for offering, in the contest for the presidency of the European Parliament, a vision of the European Union as a force for good

Professor Colin Pillinger - chief scientist of the Beagle mission to Mars, who is now planning the next generation of Beagle pups to go where Beagle 2 got lost before

Campaigner of the Year

Emmanuelle Béart, actress - for her work as goodwill ambassador for UNICEF and campaigner on behalf of France's illegal immigrants

Tony Bunyan - editor of Statewatch, for his campaign to protect civil liberties, put at risk by the package of anti- terrorism measures

Micheál Martin - Irish health minister, for introducing the EU's first national ban on smoking in bars, pubs and restaurants in Ireland

Olli Mattila - Finnish former government official, for taking on the European Commission and the Council of Ministers over access to documents

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen MEP - for his determination to make Parliament a place for high quality political debate

Business Leader of the Year

Sir John Bond - chairman of HSBC, for building up Europe's biggest bank, now rated one of the largest and best performing companies in the world

Noël Forgeard - CEO of Airbus, which for the first time delivered more aircraft than Boeing

Ingvar Kamprad - founder of IKEA and, by one measure, the world's richest man, who has transformed the interior lives of millions of Europeans

Helmut Panke - chairman of BMW, for putting BMW, Mini and Rolls-Royce ahead of DaimlerChrysler

Linnar Viik- Estonian internet guru, for his contribution to spreading internet to all sectors of society, in particular to schools

Journalist of the Year

Renaud Girard - Le Figaro, whose coup in interviewing Slobodan Milosevic this year added to a reputation for intrepid reporting from Iraq, Afghanistan, Cambodia, and the Balkans

Lilli Gruber - now an MEP, for standing up to Berlusconi and forsaking RAI television in favour of the European Parliament

Quentin Peel - Financial Times, whose informed commentaries on European politics are not afraid to fly in the face of fashion

Beppe Severgnini - Corriere della Sera, for his masterful satirical writing about Silvio Berlusconi and the plight of the Italian media

Hans-Martin Tillack - Stern, for refusing to be intimidated by the attentions of OLAF and the Belgian police and continuing to report on abuses in EU institutions

Achiever of the Year

Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki - president of the Athens 2004 Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games, for proving the doubters wrong

Tony Blair - UK prime minister, for coming through the war in Iraq and two related inquiries apparently unscathed

Paul van Buitenen - MEP and former Commission whistleblower, for winning election to the European Parliament on a transparency ticket

Otto Rehhagel - the German coach of the Greek football team which won the European championships, for giving hope to underdogs everywhere

Nick Witney - head of the European Defence Agency, for his smooth work establishing the Agency in the space of just a few months

Non-EU Citizen of the Year

Lance Armstrong - US cyclist, for taking on the Europeans at their own game and winning the Tour de France for a record sixth time

Mohammed Dahlan - Palestinian Authority's former minister of state for security, for his fight to reform the leadership of the Palestinian Authority

Recep Tayyip Erdogan - prime minister of Turkey, for putting his country on the path to reform, thereby bringing it closer to starting accession negotiations with the EU

Louise Fréchette - deputy secretary-general of the United Nations, for establishing closer links between the EU and the UN

Mikhail Saakashvili - president of Georgia, for his brave efforts to bring democracy and unity to his country

European of the Year

Any of the 50 nominated above

Shortlist of fifty Europeans who, in the view of a distinguished panel, have most influenced Europe's agenda over the past 12 months. The European of the Year, plus ten category winners are chosen by European Voice readers and are going to be announced on 30 November 2004.