In 1956, the Europa program was created to promote Europe, its culture and its history to philatelists. Each year, a unique theme is put out to competition and proposed to the participating countries. For 2023, almost a year after the start of Russia's military offensive against Ukraine, launched on February 24, 2022, which continues, the theme chosen is peace, the most important human value. This choice sounds like a reminder of the will that presided over the creation of Europe in 1950 at the end of the Second World War, summed up by Robert Schuman in a now famous formula: make Europe to make peace. But eleven years after the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union, which recognized the real efficiency of the European project, it is necessary to start thinking anew about the conditions for a lasting peace on the scale of the world, so much has the situation changed. Terrorism, the rise of religious extremism, the foreseeable increase in migration caused by climate change and the increase in the number of refugees make it necessary to think about peaceful relations between different cultures.
Exceptionally, for the EUROPA 2023 stamp, whose subject is "Peace: the most important human value", the participating countries, members of PostEurop, present a common motif which has been selected through a graphic competition, won by artists Linda BOS and Runa EGILSDOTTIR. Linda Bos and Runa Egilsdottir, figure, we don't better, through intertwined hearts and intertwined fingered hands, the union in the bosom of a common humanity of the different peoples of the world: opposite and complementary, as are the colors used here, red and green, blue and orange. The eye follows the path from sky blue to deep blue announcing the night before splashing out in the red of a rising sun, to the point of making the smooth transition from one culture to another the equivalent of leaving the night to day.
