Who could ignore the fact that today war between France and Germany is something unthinkable? The members of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee impute this as an asset item to the EU and add in this context one of the main motivations of Europe’s populations in favour of the European construction: The preservation of peace among the member states and the commitment for global peace.
However while awarding the EU with its prestigious prize, the Nobel Prize Committee deliberately ignores the policies of the “27” concerning their very own affairs.
The members of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee that awarded their prestigious distinction to the European Union have deliberately ignored the report of the “27” concerning their own domain. Three meaningful examples are enough to show how the foreign and security policy of the EU and its member countries turn their back on the commitment for a peaceful Europe and a peaceful world.
First example: the Iraq war in March 2003. The majority of the United Nations Security Council, the United Nations inspectors on site, the French head of state and the German chancellor, as well as 10 millions demonstrators that took to the streets on 15 February, were opposed to the war. Eight other countries of the EU lined up with Washington, idly believing in Colin Powell’s State-lie at the United Nations. Afterwards, these countries set the tone of the EU. Thus, from June 2003 on, the EU in its entirety adopted a text setting the “European security strategy” (still in force!), that has been submitted to George W. Bush even before its definitive approbation. In the composition of the document, many dangerous concepts were borrowed from the American war chief, for example, when the text states that the military cooperation USA-EU is a “great force for the good in the world”! We were presented with an exemplification of what this meant in Afghanistan…
Second example: the Middle East where the impunity granted to the Israeli leaders and the political abandonment of the Palestinian people constitute one of the major reasons for insecurity in the world. In December 2005, the diplomatic mission leaders of the EU-states in East-Jerusalem directed a detailed report to the European Council, alarming for all the examples of illegal practices of the Israeli authorities it contains, aiming for facilitating the establishment of a future Palestinian State. They recommended several series of political initiatives to the European leaders, according to the pertinent resolutions of the United Nations. This report was neither published nor considered, as well as all the other reports that were written in the following years. On the contrary, the EU has just rewarded war troublemakers, spectacularly reinforcing the bilateral relations EU-Israel in 60 different domains, from the energy to the electronic communications sectors to police cooperation. The symbolic or political aspect of these “gestures”, instead of helping peace, banalises the occupation, the colonisation, the humiliation and the war.
Third example: the security of the European continent itself. In June 2008, the very new Russian president Medvedev tried to make his mark. He suggested to the EU countries and to the West in general the opening of negotiations for the collective drafting of a “Pan-European security treaty”. This latter was supposed to assemble all the security questions of the continent, arms control and disarmament. Only one condition was set: that the NATO stopped its expansion towards the East. “The basic worry of Medvedev, of a Europe divided in two parts (…) seems pertinent”, stated Fabio Liberti, from the International Relations Institute (IRIS), in Le Monde Diplomatique. The European Union did not even open an explorative discussion about the project. Instead, it preferred to allow the installation of the anti-missile shield on European ground, even if it intensified the tensions and restarted the arms race.
This gives an idea of the changes that the EU and its member countries should make in order to be really worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize.