Every year a panel of opinion-leaders are gathered by the newspaper tEuropean Voice to select those they consider the most influential Europeans of the year. Among the fifty most influential Europeans of the year and in the list of the six personalities that are not from an EU country :
Non-EU Citizen of the Year
The following persons have been nominated in this category:
Mahmoud Abbas
President of the Palestinian Authority
For his efforts to create a government of national unity
Kofi Annan
Secretary-general of the United Nations
For mobilising the international community to end the fighting in Lebanon and put in place a peace-keeping force
Bill Gates
Co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundationx
For showing that well-focused private foundations have much to teach government agencies about giving aid to Africa
Alan Greenspan
Retired chairman of the Federal Reserve Board
For presiding over a long period of financial stability
Orhan Pamuk
Turkish author
For encouraging Turkish society to confront painful aspects of its past and for contributing to the soul-searching debate between tradition and modernisation
Tariq Ramadan
Swiss author
For his explorations of Muslim and European identity
You can visit the website and vote here
