Most users, like me, feel that EU does not deserve it. The glitzy Nobel Prize seems to be gradually losing its sheen. And many jokes are being made about this particular decision.
One twitter-user asks, “If the EU really has won the Nobel Prize, will Germany collect the prize, and then refuse to share it with the Greeks?”
Another says, “Winning cash will be really handy for all those underpaid eurocrats”.
Yet another says, “It could have been sillier if EU got a Nobel for Economics’.
The general feeling, therefore, is that of an eye-widening surprise, and a disappointed clicking of tongue, at the committee’s decision.
The Nobel committee strongly feels that EU deserves it for lasting peace, which it succeeded in establishing, since World War II.
But did EU really succeed in establishing lasting peace? That is my question.
About 20 of the 28 countries that make up NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) are EU member states. And have not the NATO troops been in Iraq? In Afghanistan? And, very recently, in Libya?
Did they go there, to preach peace? Or, to wage war? Can we say that EU worked for ‘lasting peace’?
Some Nobel Peace Prizes are, I think, given without the great care and responsibility they deserve.
For instance, what did Barack Obama do – even before he got elected – to receive the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize?
And, did Al Gore, with his work on climate change, really deserve the 2007 Peace prize? Did Kofi Annan really organise a peaceful world, to win the 2001 Peace prize? And, how much did the Israeli PM Menachem
Begin do, apart from attacking Iraqi installations, to receive the 1978 Peace Prize?
I think, this time too, the committee bungled up in awarding EU.
But The Guardian’s editorial, titled ‘Europe: Prize worth defending’, argues that the Nobel Prize decision was right. It says, ‘Yes, a euro of ramshackle design is impoverishing parts of the European Union, but
there is more to European life than money’.
One of the examples the editorial gives, is that of wiping out state-sponsored killings through the EU council’s protocol on the death penalty, in every nation across the continent, except
Belorussia. It argues that this achievement stands with those of previous laureates, such as Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther King.
But, what about deaths in Afghanistan and in Iraq, where some EU countries sent their troops?
The Norwegian Nobel Committee itself, in its commendation letter and press release says that , “The work of the EU represents “fraternity between nations”, and amounts to a form of the “peace congresses” to
which Alfred Nobel refers as criteria for the Peace Prize in his 1895 will”.
But I believe that the great Alfred Nobel, if he were living, would not have liked his will be interpreted in favour of EU, in this way.