The title of the 44th annual congress of the Association of European Journalists was ’Journalistic Power and Responsibility’. Well known journalists from Poland (Adam Michnik), Belgium (Pascale Bourgaux), France (Sylvain Cypel), Germany (Horst Keller), Ireland (Eileen Dunne), Greece (Athanase Papandropoulos), UK (William Horsley) and of course from Spain (Felipe Sahagun, Javier Fernandez Arribas and Diego Carcedo) spoke and comment on the subject. Special guest was Jorge Edwards from Chili, winner of the Cervantes Prize 1999.
The Asociacion de Periodistas Europeos (APE), the Spanish section of the AEJ, organised the successful congress in cooperation with the Fundacion Principe de Asturias. The President of the Principado of Asturias, Vicente Alvarez Areces, opened the congress; the Spanish Secretary of State for the EU, Alberto Navarro, closed the congress after a day with interesting speeches, views and reflections, followed by intense debate.
It was a peerless gathering of professional European journalists. Miguel Angel Aguilar, the secretary-general of APE, called it the ’Spirit of Oviedo’!