EU bigwigs will bask in Nobel glory
It took almost a week: the EU, this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, announced on Thursday it has finally decided who will pick up the prize at the ceremony in Oslo on 10 December. Commentators had mooted various possibilities, including one child from each of the 27 member states, or simply an ordinary citizen.
Instead, José Manuel Barroso, Herman Van Rompuy and Martin Schulz, presidents of the EU’s three major institutions, the European Commission, European Council and European Parliament respectively, will be making the trip to receive the award, though it still remains to be decided who will deliver the speech and how the cash prize of eight million Swedish krona will be used.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee explained its decision last Friday to award the Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union by saying that “the union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe”, and that the work of the EU represents “fraternity between nations” and amounts to a form of the “peace congresses”, the criteria laid down by Nobel Prize founder Alfred Nobel in 1895.
Read the full story in The Budapest Times.
(European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, left, and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy. Photo: President of the European Council/flickr.com)
