EU will emerge stronger, Nobel winners say

OSLO: Europe will emerge strengthened from its current crisis to symbolize hope once again, European Union President Herman Van Rompuy said yesterday in Oslo where the bloc’s leaders will collect this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.
“The EU is going through a difficult period,” Van Rompuy said. “I’m sure we will succeed. We will come out of uncertainty and recession stronger than before.”
“We want Europe to become again a symbol of hope,” he added at a press conference held on the eve of Monday’s official Nobel peace awards ceremony.
Van Rompuy flew into snowy Oslo with European Commission Chief Jose Manuel Barroso and European Parliament Head Martin Schulz, with the three of them due to pick up the 2012 prize on behalf of the EU.
But the award comes on the heels of yet another tough year for the 27-nation bloc, fighting to save the single currency after three years of a crisis that has also sapped political morale.
The chairman of the Nobel Committee, ardently pro-European Thorbjoern Jagland, stressed however that the EU had played a vital role over six decades in turning a continent at war to a continent at peace.
There were “a lot of disputes and even dramas” in those years, said Jagland. But “the disputes and dramas have never led to war. In the contrary they led to compromises.”
Half a dozen EU leaders, including Britain’s premier David Cameron, will snub Monday’s event, held even as the union prepares to enlarge by embracing Croatia as its 28th member next year.
On hand in Oslo will be the leaders of the “big two” powers France and Germany, Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel.
But relations between these two are rocky, notably holding up a deal to establish a banking union, which comes down to the wire at a summit next week, four days after the Nobel ceremony.
The deal on the banks is key to the future of the EU, which stands at a crossroads between more union and more federalism — or more uncertainty.
As they pick up the Nobel medal, diploma, and near one-million-euro prize, there is increasing weariness with the EU, which has led to a rise of euroskeptic and nationalist parties.