On October 15th, 2010, at Vienna’s town hall, aceremony is to be held to honour the recipients of the 2010 Erasmus EuroMediaAwards.

This annual event is of particularsignificance, and not merely because it offers one the possibility to spend apleasant couple of hours surrounded by friendly, open-minded people whosebroad, European focus is a tribute to their upbringing and their culture. Thereason however this is significant is because, since its inception in 1995, theobject and purpose of the EuroMedia awards has been to reward „outstanding media productions contributingto the development of a European society and value system“.

In EuroMedia’s reward system, the mostprestigious prize is the Grand Award, meant to recognise the most outstandingcontribution. However, a series of other prizes are also given and all thesubmissions that meet the criteria are rewarded with the EuroMedia Seal ofApproval, which is meant to recognise the intrinsic quality of the product.

On the whole, however, the medals andsponsorships are awarded on the base of the following criteria: the level ofdiscussion of European topics, the depth of analysis and critical assessment /reassessment, the quality of realization in terms of design, aesthetics andmedia language and the value for use in educational contexts.

Among those other prizes, of particularinterest is the Sponsorship Award on Migration and Integration, which issponsored and supported by the ECo-C. This is hardly a surprise: many of thegoals of the ESEC foundation, which delivers the awards, are in perfectresonance with the goals of the ECo-C: the geographical scope, the focus on theprovision of high-quality training, and in high-quality realization as wellas  the primacy of the common culturalarea that is Europe.

We, at eco-c.eu, would like to congratulate allparticipants for their submissions and their seals of approval, and thank themfor their contribution to the European educational framework, of which we, too,form a part. Certainly, only a few of the submissions will win the prizes. Butit is through the sheer number of contributions, through the simple pleasure ofhaving many deserving parties, that one truly apprehends the importance ofthose topics to European integration, and that one truly understands the unityof purpose that overlays the diversity of our origins and vies.