The jury for the European Prize for romantic novels met on Saturday 11 January 2025 at the Médiathèque André Malraux in Strasbourg. On the basis of the results of the online voting, which closed on 31 December 2024 with a record turnout, the vote of the College of Institutional Partners and the vote of the "People's Jury", made up of independent readers, it declared Mabrouk RACHEDI (France) and Louise KENNEDY (Ireland) joint winners of the European Union Fiction Prize for their novels "Tous les mots qu'on ne s'est pas dits" and "Troubles" respectively. The two winners will be invited to Strasbourg in mid-April to receive their prizes and meet the public.
The 3rd edition of the European Prize for romantic novels will take place over a two-year cycle (2024 - 2025), following the example of the "Strasbourg, World Book Capital" project, awarded by UNESCO. Ten novels from ten Council of Europe member countries (Austria, Azerbaijan, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and Ukraine) took part. Seven countries participated in the two previous editions (2019-2020 and 2022-2023), the winners of which were Maria Duenas (Spain) and Cristina Comencini (Italy).