This year's winner of the Nobel Peace Prize goes to...

[The Artist formerly known as Sappho]

The EU?

Why have we started giving this thing to continents? Humans not cutting it anymore? Do groups in general qualify for the Noble Awards now?

I'd like to see The Chattering Classes get Noble Literature Prize.

[AiA in Atlanta]

Am scratching my head over that one.

[mantra]

I thought I was hearing things too. This is a smack in the face for deserving individuals. The EU is broken. The Peace Prize is being used as a political spin to remind the world of the successful unity once apparently achieved by the EU and the possibility that its greatness can rise again. Do they expect the masses to fall for this?

In its more than half-century of existence, the European Union (née EEC) has never reached a lower ebb in the affections of its peoples.

The great single currency project, intended to make Europe an economic and financial powerhouse, now threatens to sever the continent along a jagged line between north and south. European governments and the Brussels institutions have tinkered feebly with the debt crisis for more than two years. Their failures and divisions could yet plunge the world into a catastrophic depression.

Opinion polls – even in countries such as Germany, France and the Netherlands –produce large, exasperated majorities of the Euro-hostile, the Euro-sceptic or the Euro-disappointed. Many people who once vaguely or actively approved of the European idea feel that their patience and optimism have been abused.

As the Ukip leader, Nigel Farage, helpfully pointed out, the Nobel prize was awarded to “Brussels” in the same week that the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, was greeted with swastika banners on a visit to Athens. For the first time in half a century, the survival of the EU, and its bedrock, the single European market, are open to doubt.

WHY

And that is why the Nobel Committee in Norway was quite right to give its 2012 peace award to the EU. There could be no better time to remind people of the muddled achievements of the European Union and to warn of the dangers represented by its gradual dissolution or collapse.

The Norwegian committee chairman, Thorbjoern Jagland – although representing a country that never joined the EU – suggested that the peace award was not just about the past but also about the future. We Europeans, he implied, forget too easily what we have achieved in the past half century.

“The EU is currently undergoing grave economic difficulties and considerable social unrest,” Mr Jagland said. “The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to focus on what it sees as the EU’s most important result: the successful struggle for peace and reconciliation and for democracy and human rights.”

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[The Artist formerly known as Sappho]

Maybe the EU could use the prize money to pay down a bit of the debt...

[Mattus]

The Nobel prize in physics awarded to the solar system, the Nobel prize in medicine awarded to the NHS?

[IQS.RLOW]

The Nobel committee jumped the shark when Obama was nominated and then won it for his "outstanding" efforts in international diplomacy etc... Two weeks after being elected

[Mattus]

. Two weeks after being elected

Given that some here are easily fooled by satire, you might have to go easy on the poetic license. Obama was elected on nov 4 2008 and awarded the Nobel prize on oct 9 2009.

[IQS.RLOW]

I never said otherwise.

What I did say was that his nomination was submitted 2 weeks after being elected

[The Artist formerly known as Sappho]

I never said otherwise.

Yes you did. Its that old bug bear comprehension again eh IQ?

The Nobel committee jumped the shark when Obama was nominated and then won it for his "outstanding" efforts in international diplomacy etc... Two weeks after being elected

Can you see the casual relationships in your grammar? According to you, Obama was NOMINATED AND THEN WON.... TWO WEEKS AFTER BEING ELECTED.

What I did say was that his nomination was submitted 2 weeks after being elected

Maybe that is what you intended to say Dumb Boy and then didn't.

The Nobel committee jumped the shark when Obama was nominated for his "outstanding" efforts in international diplomacy etc... Two weeks after being elected

Back to primary school with you IQ

[IQS.RLOW]

Can you point out where "being nominated and won... Two weeks after election" is incorrect? Open to interpretation doesn't not equal being incorrect

Pretty eager to jump at shadows eh, Sappho?