Famous for his moustache, Polish former electrician Lech Wałęsa (born 1943) entered politics when he became the leader of Solidarity, the largest anti-communist social movement in Central Europe. In the 1980s he led mass protests in Poland, which eventually contributed to the downfall of the Soviet Union. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, and elected as the president of Poland in 1990.

The “Grandmother of the European Union”, French journalist and feminist Louise Weiss (1893-1983) was an influential voice in international affairs from the 1920s. She founded The New Europe magazine, inspired ideas about European integration, and led France to granting voting rights for women in 1944. Elected to the European Parliament at the age of 86, she was the oldest MEP at the time. 

One of the ‘founding fathers of the European Union’, the former French prime minister and minister of foreign affairs Robert Schuman (1886-1963) is mostly known for his famous declaration dated 9 May 1950. He proposed the political and economic integration of Western Europe which resulted in the creation of the European Economic Community, and later the European Union. To commemorate the Schuman Declaration, we celebrate Europe Day every year on 9 May.

A Holocaust survivor, feminist icon and campaigner against anti-Semitism, Simone Veil (1927-2017) was a French politician of Jewish descent. She spent her life fighting for women’s rights. In 1974, as Minister of Health, she managed to push through the ‘Veil Law’, legalising abortion. Her concentration camp experience turned her into a passionate advocate of European unification. She was the first woman elected the President of the European Parliament in 1979.

A symbol of the peaceful transition from communism to democracy in Eastern Europe, writer and idealist Václav Havel (1936-2011) was transformed from an imprisoned dissident to the president of the Czech Republic. During the so-called Velvet Revolution, he showed that an important political change can be implemented in a non-violent way – even if it seems impossible.

Famous for his love for art and literature, Winston Churchill (1874-1965) was a politician, an army officer, and a writer. He was one of the most active pre-war anti-Nazi campaigners, becoming British Prime minister in 1940 and again in 1951. Considered one of the most iconic figures of the 20^th Century, Churchill dreamt of building the ‘United States of Europe’. In 1953 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature for his ‘brilliant oratory in defending exalted human values’.