17 October 2012

Europe wins the Peace Noble Prize: a farce!



After Obama in 2009, a new farce, the Peace Nobel Prize is attributed to the European Union which “for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe”

Whilst nobody disputes that countries within the EU are still democracies, it is a different story for the EU where decision making is undemocratic and at best opaque, the European Parliament having nearly no power, and in any case all its members but a small minority are led by the EU integrationist dogma which does not accept any contradiction and debate about the construction of the EU.

Referenda are very rarely held to ask the opinion of the European population about major Treaties which take away local democracy to a central unelected bureaucracy in Brussels led by an apparatchik-like elite disconnected from the real world.

“The stabilizing part played by the EU has helped to transform most of Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace

This is a travesty of the truth:

There have been no war in Western Europe since WWII thanks to the reconciliation between France and Germany, between two statesmen -General de Gaulle and Chancellor Adenauer-, statesmen that the EU has been lacking for a good 40 years while gathering plenty of shortsighted politicians whose sole horizon is the next election. This low quality politic class is unfortunately shared by the US.

Beyond this, peace was ensured thanks to the US nuclear umbrella and NATO that resulted in a power balance with the USRR and it Varsaw Pact allies might.

In terms of maintaining or advancing peace, one can be doubtful about the EU capability, or even willingness, when analyzing its failure during the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990’s, closing a prude eye in front of massacres (remember that at the beginning of the Yugoslavian disintegration the EU –and the US- supported the central power in Belgrade). Today nothing would change.

The Peace Noble Prize has always a political message. My reading for 2012 is the following: “To the European population, further EU social, fiscal and economic integration with more taxes and power centralized to Brussels is the only way forward to get you out of the economic, financial and social mess you are in. To the Scotts, Flemish, Catalans, Lombards, etc. do not break away from your country; solidarity from richer to poorest regions is the only option, whatever the origin of the gap.” 

The subliminal message is to frighten the population on the risk of an intra-European war following a return to a nationalistic agenda of the pre WWII. This is utter fallacy. Good governance, more research, better education, less bureaucracy, better tax regime, more working hours, late retirement, etc. is the only way forward for an over indebted region entering a recession, with a banking system living on the ECB lifeline.

Source:

The Nobel prize Organization