A 17 member jury chose 10 film sin the first round, out of several hundred eligible films, and then selected of the final three pictures. The jury members were appointed by the Cultural Committee of the European Parliament and one-third of the jury is rotated every year, jury member Gyorgy Baron told FNE. All the 785 members of the European Parliament can watch the final films from 15 September to 16 October, but only who have seen all three films are entitled to vote.

The winner of this year's award will be announced in an award-ceremony at 22nd October. The estimated value of the award is €87,000, the cost of subtitling the winning film into each of the 23 official language of the EU, making a 35mm print for every member country. Last year's winner was Fatih Akin's Cannes- and European film-awarded German movie The Edge of Heaven.

The Lux Prize was established last year and was named after the Latin word for light. The objective of the Lux Prize is to illuminate public debate on European integration and to facilitate the diffusion of European films in the European Union. The Lux Prize is created by the Belgian artist Jocelyne Coster and is a representation of the Tower of Babel. Fiction and documentary films with a minimum length of 60 minutes, and released for the first time between May 1 of the previous year and June 1 of the current year, are eligible for the Lux Prize. The film must have been produced or co-produced in an EU country or in Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.