EU Awarded Nobel Peace Prize
The European Union was last week awarded the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize. Previous institutional recipients of the award include the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2007), the United Nations (2001), and the Red Cross (1944). While the announcement was met with pride and applause by many within and without Europe, the Euroskeptics have been equally vocal in their derision of the award, pointing to ongoing social instability in many regions of Europe due in part to the Eurozone economic crisis, and the ongoing existentialist crisis the EU seems to be facing.
Such objections somewhat miss the point of the accolade, which has clearly been granted in reference to a longer-term contextualization of the ‘European project’ – after a century of continental turmoil, the creation of the European Communities in the 1950s, which eventually led to the birth of the European Union, was a watershed moment, marking the beginning of a new era of intergovernmental cooperation, an unprecedented single market project, and supranational implementation and enforcement of a new legal order for the benefit of European citizens.