Nobel award recognises Europe as "continent of peace"

The European Union received the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday, honoured by the Norwegian committee which looked beyond Europe's current malaise to recognise its decades of stability and democracy after the horrors of two world wars. Fittingly for an institution with no single leader, the EU sent three of its presidents to the Oslo ceremony for the 2012 prize, wh ich critics including former Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu say is undeserved. "Sixty years of peace. It's the first time that this has happened in the long history of Europe," Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, told Reuters before the ceremony. "The facts prove that the European Union is a peacekeeping instrument of the first order," said Van Rompuy, who will collect the prize along with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Ma r tin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament. Europe is suffering feeble economic growth or outright recession, soaring unemployment and a number of its member states are unable to pay their debts. It has been called the worst economic crisis since World War Two. The economic pain has provoked social unrest in a number of member states, notably...