It’s a bizarre choice, to say the least which prompts the question What exactly was the committee thinking? Whom did they have in mind? One would hope that it was not the vast anonymous EU bureaucracy living and working in Brussels, arguing over the size of bananas or precisely how smelly a cheese should be to earn the name Camembert. Nor, one would hope, did they have in mind the euro zone, the 17 countries that share a common currency. What some Germans call “the fit countries” ready to climb the Mount Everest of political-financial maturity under the expert guide of the fittest country of them all: Germany. Nor, one would hope, did they have in mind the myopic politicians currently at the helm of such a union.

One would have to be blind to think that the crisis in the euro zone is solved and that the reward for such a feat is the awarding of the Nobel Peace prize. Some of the EU politicians in their myopia are already interpreting it in such a misguided mode. But to think that is to callously discount the suffering of some of the EU members. It is also to continue to ignore a present and looming danger: those financial imperatives may eventually trump democratic institutions in the EU as a whole. The rise of right wing fascist-leaning political parties in most EU countries points to it.  

One would hope that rather than that the committee had in mind all the 27 countries comprising the EU, the fit and the unfit alike, and the political vision that allows 500 million people to live together in harmony, with human rights safeguarded. As Human Rights Watch pointed out when the announcement was made, the 27 foreign ministers of the EU recently signed an agreement to put human rights at the centre of their negotiations with the rest of the world. The countries that still want to join the EU – Croatia becomes a member next year, Serbia has its fingers crossed – must improve how they treat their own citizens first.

One hopes and prays that it was that which the committee had in mind since it cited the EU for: democracy, human rights, reconciliation. These are ideals which featured prominently when the founding fathers of the EU laid the foundations for the vision of a polity unlike any other on earth. I am not thinking now of the current buffoon politicians, the likes of Silvio Berlusconi, but of genuine visionary statesmen such as Schumann, Monet, Eidenauer, De Gasperi. It would have been nice to mention those men and their vision in the awarding of the prize, thus putting on a human face on the EU and not make it appear as if the award was given to a faceless bureaucracy. It should not be forgotten that it is that vision, more than the financial solvency of its banks and mere economic prosperity which has brought peace to Europe, buttressed by a Western alliance called NATO which assumed responsibility for its security.

So perhaps this was the worst of times to give the peace prize to the EU, but it could also be the best time as a reminder of that the EU should stand for. This time last year, we all bit our nails as the G20 leaders gathered in Cannes to try to sort out the mess in the euro zone. It seemed Europe was teetering on the abyss, that the whole project would fall apart in a matter of weeks. But the crisis is not over yet, and more than an economic crisis, it is first and foremost a cultural crisis which can be traced to the forgetting of the original ideals of the EU founding fathers.

To conclude those musings let me simply remind all EU citizens that the EU from its very beginning was a noble idea and it will live or die as an idea independent of the financial solvency of its banks. I hope the Norwegians, who refuse to join the union, had that in mind. For, if that is not the case, then both the EU and the Nobel Peace prize have been mocked.