EU deserved the Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize for Peace this year has rightly gone to the European Union. (“Crisis-ridden EU wins 2012 Nobel peace prize,” Oct. 13).
Indeed, it makes sense that the prize should go to an organization, which unlike so many other regional or continental bodies has made its presence effectively felt in the lives of the European people.
Given the historical background behind the formation of the European Common Market, which was to transform itself into European Union, it is remarkable that Europe has so assiduously and surely reinvented itself. No one who witnessed the tragedy that was the World War II could ever have imagined that a time would arrive when integration among the nations of Europe would lead to the enterprise the EU is today.
Beginning with limited membership, the EU has in recent times expanded beyond anyone’s imagination. But that again is only natural given that the fall of communism in Eastern Europe was followed by a beeline on the part of former members of the Soviet bloc for entry into the EU. Earlier, there was a time when a number of attempts made by the British to enter the Common Market were rebuffed by the French under Charles de Gaulle. All of that is now in the past. It is only membership for Turkey, which remains a key issue with the EU today. In the years since the EU began to expand, Europeans across national borders have come together politically and economically, to a point where the EU has often served as a model for such regional groupings as ASEAN, SAARC and the African Union.
There is little question, though, that there are yet a number of issues that bedevil the EU, the foremost being the economic recession, which has, laid such nations as Greece low. Yet even here the concerted effort made by the body toward a collective approach to the issue has left people around the world impressed.
The EU has by and large been symbolic of hope. The Nobel gives a new shine to that hope. It also sends out a message to those global regions where unity of purpose among nations is yet a missing factor. — Naser Mullah, Riyadh