Abstract
On 12 October 2012, the Oslo-based Nobel Committee announced the award of the annual Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union (EU) ‘for the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe’, according to the press release announcing the Committee’s choice. Four key motivations lay behind the Committee’s decision. First, the EU has been identified as instrumental in ending the historical Franco-German hostility, making war between these two states ‘unthinkable’ and showing how ‘through well-aimed efforts and by building up confidence, historical enemies can become close partners’. Second, the incorporation of southern democracies emerging from dictatorship (Greece, Spain and Portugal) into EU institutions has contributed to consolidating their democratic character. Third, the post-Cold War extension of EU membership to several Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries has opened a ‘new era in European history’, ending the historical division between East and West and strengthening democracy. Fourth, membership prospects have been reinforcing the ‘process of reconciliation in the Balkans’ and advancing ‘democracy and human rights’ in Turkey. In sum, the Committee argued, ‘the EU has helped to transform most of Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace’.1
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Notes
Nobel Committee, ‘The Nobel Peace Prize 2012 to the European Union (EU) — Press Release’, 2012, www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2012/press.html, accessed 26 October 2015.
I use ‘EU’ and ‘Europe’ interchangeably, both to make the prose more readable and in recognition of the fact that the EU has effectively occupied the identity space of Europe as a political community. Needless to say, there are other international organizations (such as the Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, etc.) which compete with the EU in representing Europe. For reasons of space, these organizations are not part of the analysis. See T. Risse, A Community of Europeans? Transnational Identities and Public Spheres (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2010).
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© 2016 Roberto Belloni
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Belloni, R. (2016). Peace in Europe. In: Richmond, O.P., Pogodda, S., Ramović, J. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Disciplinary and Regional Approaches to Peace. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-40761-0_32
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