Blessed are EU’s peace makers

A PROPOSAL by a former Norwegian prime minister this week that the European Union should be nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize is unlikely to make any headway in a sceptical Norway that has twice voted ‘no’ to EU membership.

Indeed it’s easy to knock Brussels as a vast bureaucratic machine, eroding national sovereignties and imposing mountains of useless regulations, or even to loathe it as a juggernaut of globalisation and international capitalism.
And yet… Set aside all the issues about which Eurosceptics gripe and consider the phenomenal achievements of the project as it prepares to expand to 25 members this year. The European Union, which grew out of the ruins of a Europe destroyed in the Second World War, is a quite unprecedented project of political philosophy, the first ever example of peaceful empire-building by consensus.

Through its institutions, it has established conflict resolution mechanisms based on the rule of law, now spreading from Western Europe across the continent into the East. Through the politics of politics and compromise, it has taken major steps to end centuries of rivalries between nation states in Europe, presiding over the longest period of peace on the once-fractious continent.

And while heads of government face each other off in all-night summits to battle for the future of the Europe, the sparring is all political, and the prospect of war breaking out among members is nigh on inconceivable.
So yes, for all its faults, the EU does deserve the Nobel Peace Prize for presiding over half a century of peace in Europe, for overseeing decades of prosperity, for anchoring democracy among its members, and now extending those principles and benefits by bringing Eastern Europe in from the cold.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.