EUROPEAN PRIZE COUDENHOVE-KALERGI 2018 goes to the Ukrainian„The Heavenly Hundreds“ posthum

Karl von Habsburg, President of the Austrian Paneuropa Movement In 2013 Ukraine was meant to have signed an Association Agreement with the European Union. There had already been extensive negotiations. However, at the last moment, in November 2013 the then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich refused to sign the agreement. This refusal was the start of a huge wave of protests by the Ukrainian population, which focused in particular at the Maidan, the central Freedom Square in the capital Kiev. The non-signing of the treaty was preceded by massive pressure from Russia, which, with its project to establish a Eurasian Union, refused to accept Ukraine's rapprochement with the EU. The protests against the President's policies were directed not only against the unprecedented level of corruption in Ukraine, but above all against a political path that would have led Ukraine back into the grips of Moscow, the country which Ukraine first broke free from in 1918 and then again in 1991. The clearly European orientation of the protests gave them the name Euromaidan. The notorious riot police Berkut tried several times to dissolve the demonstrations, mostly at night when there were only a few demonstrators in the square. After all, people had to go to work during the day and could not remain permanently on the Maidan. In the monasteries and churches around the city center, as during the Mongol invasion, the bells were rung to call its people to defend themselves against this attack on their freedom. Despite a cold winter, the protests did not abate. The refusal of the president to respond to demands of the demonstrators led to a steady increase in the number of participants. In February 2014 the situation escalated. On 20th February 2014, demonstrators in Kiev on the Euromaidan were shot at. More than 50 demonstrators were intentionally killed with headshots. In the course of the protests more people were added to the number of those killed. And some are still missing. Due to the total number of those killed, these victims of the protest against a brutal regime were given the name "Heavenly Hundreds" or "the Heaven’s Hundred Heroes". They died for a free Ukraine, for a free, democratic country which was to determine its own fate and not become again a vassal of Russia. The Euromaidan protests were protest in favour of dignity over an authoritarian, corrupt, paternalistic system. It was an uprising in favour of a European future for Ukraine. It was a manifestation of democracy and freedom. It has been the first European mass protest for decades and thus an example of a truly European sentiment. The protesters at the Euromaidan, who pulled through despite the cold, and the intimidations of the Yanukovych regime, showed more European sentiment than many European politicians. It was a commitment to Europe despite all threats. It was a commitment to Europe at the cost of life. In Ukraine, therefore, these protests are also referred to as a "revolution of dignity". The European Prize is awarded to the director of the MUSEUM OF THE REVOLUTION OF DIGNITY symbolically and on behalf of the patriotic demonstrators killed on the Maidan in Kiev in 2014. The award ceremony will take place on 18 October 2018 as part of a Pan-European Congress in Kiev.