‘No convincing reason for the Nobel Peace Award to go to the European Union’: Ram Madhav writes

by Ram Madhav, RSS Akhil Bharatiya Sah Sampark Pramukh

Bhopal October 17, 2012

Ram Madhav, top RSS Functionary

Not many people knew that Norway is one important country that refuses to join the European Union. Important because Norway is the richest economy in the entire Europe, which is struggling today due to severe recession.
That the organising committee of the Nobel prizes is headquartered in Oslo needs special mention because it is this very same committee that decided to award this year's Nobel Peace Prize to the crumbling edifice called the European Union. That is why many in Europe are describing it as a crude joke, black humour etc.
Nobel awards have lost their reputation long ago. Especially the Peace Award increasingly came to be seen by the world as a politically motivated one. Even the greatest champion of peace Mahatma Gandhi, has ever been awarded the Peace Prize whereas Barak Obama won it within just few months of ascension to the White House for no apparent reason.
This time also there is no convincing reason for the Peace Award to go to the European Union. In the last one decade or so the EU has not covered itself in any particular glory. It has not played any meaningful role in securing world peace. Several of its member states like the UK were active partners in George Bush era wars in the Arab world. Several of the EU nations were involved in lending direct or indirect support to Orange Revolution in some countries of the Arab region that had culminated in bringing into power illiberal Islamists in many of those countries.

Within the EU also things are not so much in order for it to deserve any such Award. Cold War between Germany and France and UK continues to dominate EU politics. Uneasy truce is of course an achievement between Germany and France. Euro is in deep distress. Countries in the south are bankrupt while those in the north are in no mood to come to their rescue. As a result nationalism and anti-EU sentiment is on the rise in some of these countries like Spain, Greece etc. There were even demonstrations against the German Chancellor Merkel when she visited Greece recently.
Recovery of Euro seems to remain a distant dream. European Union is becoming increasingly irrelevant to global politics and seen by many countries in the rest of the world as only an appendage of the US. In spite of its existence for long years, countries in the rest of the world find it convenient to deal with individual countries rather than the EU as an entity.
In fact EU as an entity doesn't really inspire confidence as a democratic body. It's two wings the European Parliament and the European Commission act independent of each other with the former practically having no meaningful powers.
In such a scenario for the Nobel Committee to decide to give the coveted Peace Prize to the EU can at best be described as a morale booster only.