And the Nobel Peace Prize goes to....the EU...?

[Dennis the 'Bloody Peasant']

Your thoughts, comrades? I've tended to view said prize as a pretty unimportant ceremonial thing that doesn't have any real impact (I mean, if they'll give one to Obama, they'll give it to anyone).
But never-the-less, what are your thoughts on this particular one? Odd timing, no? (eurozone crisis etc)

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.
The last organisation to be given the award outright was Medecins Sans Frontieres, which won in 1999.
Announcing the award, Nobel committee president Thorbjoern Jagland acknowledged the EU's current financial problems and social unrest.
But he said the committee wanted to concentrate on the body's work over six decades of advancing "peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights".

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-19921072)

[Regicollis]

It can not be totally excluded that the EU had role in preventing the bourgeois states of Western Europe from going to war again. However what little effect the EU might have had in that ceased to exist many decades ago.
What has the EU done in recent years to promote peace? Nothing I can think of.

The Peace Prize should go to someone who has actually done something to promote peace, someone who risked something and someone who actually needs a Peace Prize as a recognition of their work or to draw attention to their struggle.

The Peace Prize has become watered down lately first Obama gets it for not being Bush and now the EU....

[Os Cangaceiros]

The NPP is a joke. I personally can't stand the smug bureaucrats of the EU.

[doesn't even make sense]

I feel like the big shot liberal establishment types who run shit like the Nobel Peace Prize have run out of cutesy inoffensive third world causes to promote so now they're just giving prizes to themselves.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

The NPP is a joke. I personally can't stand the smug bureaucrats of the EU.
I've always thought the NPP was a long running Norwegian joke. Anyone who can give a prize for peace to Henry Kissinger, Gorbachev and the EU while keeping a straight face is nothing more than a genius comedian.

[GiantMonkeyMan]

I feel like the big shot liberal establishment types who run shit like the Nobel Peace Prize have run out of cutesy inoffensive third world causes to promote so now they're just giving prizes to themselves.
Norway is not in the EU. :)

[doesn't even make sense]

Norway is not in the EU. :)

I am aware of that, I was just speaking loosely about people of a certain political stripe and social class.

[Lynx]

Next winner of the prize: capitalism

[Igor]

tbh eu and the whole process of european integration have had a role in making europe more peaceful, with the exception of yugoslavia there hasn't been major wars in the whole continent after the whole thing kicked off and formerly hostile european powers are shitting on rest of the world in jolly unison

but yeah no clue why they're giving the award now, european integration has been happening for 60 something years and nothing especially notable regarding that has happened recently, especially anything that could be seen as promoting peace. i guess they just ran out of ideas.

[Zealot]

Maybe they decided the EU needs a hug for all the shit its been getting lately.

[Igor]

Maybe they decided the EU needs a hug for all the shit its been getting lately.

you joke, but this probably isn't that far away from the truth: eu as of now is in need of a serious image boost and nobel peace prize could be something if there was a single person left who's taking it seriously at this point.

[ComradeOm]

Europe is going through its most prolonged period of peace since the fall of Rome. The EU is certainly not the only reason for this but it would be churlish in the extreme to ignore or belittle the role that EU institutions and aspirations have played in creating a continent (finally) at peace

[Ocean Seal]

Europe is going through its most prolonged period of peace since the fall of Rome. The EU is certainly not the only reason for this but it would be churlish in the extreme to ignore or belittle the role that EU institutions and aspirations have played in creating a continent (finally) at peace
By taking their wars and pushing them somewhere else.

[ComradeOm]

Which they've done... where? Where's this substitute for, say, the Franco-German conflict that killed tens of millions across the space of a few centuries? In which wars "somewhere else" has the EU, or EU member states, been the prime antagonists?

Edit:
Or let's dispense with the faux questions: The whole idea that this is a zero sum game in which an absence of wars in Europe must be balanced out by the generation of wars outside the continent is absurd and stupid

[Roach]

I just think it is no time for leftists to praise EU's so-called ''peace'' while the workers of Greece, Spain, Portugal and other countries suffer under austerity to pay the debts of the rulling class.

[Igor]

I just think it is no time for leftists to praise EU's so-called ''peace'' while the workers of Greece, Spain, Portugal and other countries suffer under austerity to pay the debts of the rulling class.

so-called? there isn't a single war being fought on european soil at the moment, which is historically exceptional. that's peace, not so-called "peace" and it's a nice thing to have even with the austerity measures

[Roach]

so-called? there isn't a single war being fought on european soil at the moment, which is historically exceptional. that's peace, not so-called "peace" and it's a nice thing to have even with the austerity measures

It is true that there are no wars between nation-states in the european continent, and yes, that is a good thing, but the class war is being waged violently due to the austerity measures, the spanish miners are the best example of that:

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