EU Nobel Prize: The Greatest Honor in the Darkest Hour

The European Union has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for six decades of work in advancing peace in Europe. The committee said the EU had helped to transform Europe “from a continent of war to a continent of peace”.

The award comes as the EU faces the biggest crisis of its history, with recession and social unrest rocking many of its member states.

I grew up in that European Union when it was still called the European Economic Community or EEC, later shortened to European Communities or EC before turning into the European Union in the 1990s.

Like many Europeans, I have been taking European integration for granted over the years. Compare it to the Europe suffering through Hitler’s wars and Nazi atrocities, and postwar Europe becomes a veritable oasis of peace and prosperity, at least in the western half of the continent.

There hadn’t been a generation of Europeans without a war for so many years until the tragic disintegration of Yugoslavia, which happened outside the EU, of course.

In February 1998, then German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was awarded the Honorary Freedom of the City of London. I covered the event for the German Service of the BBC and will always remember Kohl’s speech, in which he described how, as a young man, he needed a permit to travel from Mainz to Wiesbaden in post-war Germany, a short trip across the Rhine river.

When I moved from Germany to Britain with my wife in 1989, we didn’t need visas or work permits. Being EC nationals was enough. That’s how far European integration between former enemies had advanced since May 1945.

Today, in the so-called Schengen area, (22 EU and 4 non-EU states) passport controls have been abolished as well, and 17 of the 27 member states share a common currency.

I sincerely hope the current economic difficulties will not destroy all of that.

Interestingly, the European Union has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize by a committee in Norway, a country that has steadfastly refused to join the EU.

A mistake, if you ask me, as Norway could have been a more integral part in helping transform Europe “from a continent of war to a continent of peace”.

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