The EU wins the Nobel what prize?

On Friday, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded their highly coveted Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union. According to the Committee, the "union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe."

Well, yes, the EU has done a lot of good. The free movement of people, for instance, has given Europeans the possibility of voting with their feet. Despite what the Daily Mail would have us believe, this right to move will force governments to raise their game. And red tape emanating from Brussels risks stifling growth, but the common market gives European businesses the opportunity to branch out into new markets – a nice by-product of which is enhanced consumer choice.

But the Noble Peace Prize? Seriously? Have the Nobel Committee been living on the bottom of a fjord for the last five years?

Referring to the close ties that exist today between France and Germany, those all too often warring neighbours, the Committee reasoned that "through well aimed efforts and building up mutual confidence, historical enemies can become close partners". That is all well and good, but the EU's current policies seem designed to foster distrust and drive regions apart.

Rather than strengthening national ties, as the Nobel committee would have it, the EU's answer to the sovereign debt crisis has resulted in a gradual but sustained erosion of trust between North and South, ditto rich and poor.

De facto EU policies such as favoring of austerity over haircuts for investors, and pushing elected leaders into early retirement, have led to a steep and unfortunate rise in support for nationalist and extremist parties and attacks on foreigners. Crude, prejudicial caricatures of national stereotypes have made a return to many a broadsheet. We have even become accustomed to seeing flags and effigies of our leaders being burned on European streets. 

The foremost reason behind this rise in distrust and animosities is the fiscal imbalance caused by the EMU. It has plunged some of the Eurozone countries, Greece and Spain in particular, into unemployment, civil unrest and violence, while enabling the so-called core countries (Germany, France, the Netherlands, Finland) to live in relative luxury. Their citizens, on the other hand, are becoming disaffected by a growing perception that their taxes are paying for the economic mismanagement of their Southern neighbours. 

The result of this terminal tango has been poverty, distress and paranoia in the South; wealth, resentment and xenophobia in the North. Devising and enforcing such a divisive economic system, that by its very nature creates winners and losers and then sets out to reinforce the disparities, doesn't, to me at least, sound like Nobel Peace Prize territory.

We could also point out to the Committee that less than 20 years ago, on European soil, this harbinger of peace failed to both prevent and bring to an end the vicious and bloody wars in the Balkans. While Brussels was busy setting up the EMU, Europeans were witness to humanitarian atrocities (cf Sarajevo) and very real attempts at genocide (cf Srebrenica). It was left to the US and NATO to bring to an end this tragic chapter in European bloodletting.


But, putting aside all of the above, the prize still doesn't make sense. If the Panel wanted to award a human endeavour that produces stability and fosters peace, the rightful winner would have been liberal democracy. The panel have confused cause with result. There is not a single case of a liberal democracy fighting a war against another liberal democracy: the EU did not create the 60 years of stability on our continent, it was born of that peace. 

Even with such noble roots, these days, the EU disregards cooked books when it served its purpose (cf Greek entry), turns a blind eye to huge overspending by member states (cf rules on deficits), interferes in the democratic process of sovereign nations, refuses to disclose its own accounts for public scrutiny, and brakes its own rules without batting an eyelid (cf bailing out countries).

It has, of course, been a difficult few years, but it is exactly at such times – when the going gets tough – that an institution's true nature will show. On the same day as the Prize was awarded, a more deserving recipient of the Peace Prize, the Dalai Lama, tweeted that:

"Peace isn't the mere absence of violence; real peace must come from inner peace. And inner piece comes from taking other's interests into account".

In this respect, the EU has failed miserably.

An example of a more worthy winner would have been Malala Yousafzai, the 14 year old girl in Afghanistan who is fighting for her life after being shot in the head on her way to school by the Taliban. Her crime, according to the sick and twisted perpetrators, was to promote equality between the sexes. Already at such a young age, she has paid an incredible price for promoting peace and equality, and for having  the courage to stand by her convictions.


The only rational explanation that I can think of, for awarding the Peace Prize to the EU and not Malala, for example, would be that the oil rich and impeccably mannered Norwegians wanted to help their financially embattled neighbour with a donation of €750,000. The prize, in any case, will no doubt be swallowed up swiftly by the beaurocrats, MEPs and special advisors in Brussels. The inhabitants of the European Union, meanwhile, suffering from an economic catastrophe created by their leaders but facilitated by the EU, will more than likely become increasingly marginalised and disenfranchised.

The Nobel Committee has, it must be said, previous form in picking unlikely winners. It was a surprise to most when Obama received the Peace Prize for little more than a a handful of speeches – after which, we should remind ourselves, he increased drone strikes, drew up an official 'kill list', and ordered extrajudicial assassinations on foreign lands. This peace maker even basked in the publicity. Go figure. But at least the hypocricy wasn't quite as rank as Gaddaffi's Libya chairing the Human Rights Commission. 

Perhaps Mao had a point, that political power rests in the barrel of a gun. I'd hope not, but one thing is depressingly clear: when it comes to the decision making organs of our global institutions, the Nobel Committee included, politicking, backhanders and favoritism tend to trump facts, justice and historical accuracy.

The EU winning the Nobel Peace Price? Please. Alfred must be turning in his grave.