Deviating from the usual practice of choosing a person with exemplary record in promoting peace, this year the Norwegian Nobel Committee has chosen the European Union [EU] for the peace prize. Since the decision was announced, it has evoked mixed response from across the world. The prize may have come just at the right time for the union of 27 sovereign, mostly white, nations, which is fighting to keep itself together and whose ‘weaker’ nations have defaulted many times on their debt promises and whose economic state has led to their people to reject international economic bodies, like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The EU was formed on the principles of economic solidarity, most notably at a time when either the national domestic products of smaller nations were contracting and the global profiteering in the post-colonial world had gone in the hands of the US companies. But, while Europe took careful, decisive steps towards becoming the EU, it was always conscious of a shared history and faith in its civilisation project, which defined much of its colonial outlook post-Renaissance. In that sense, the EU was an economic, post-national layer on a historical project which had gone bust during World War II.
Europe has had many options to be more inclusive in its journey towards becoming the EU. It also had the option of offering an alternative to the concept of national sovereignty. But, on most of these counts it has failed to deliver. The term ‘nation-state’ may have gone out of fashion in the European discourse about the EU, but the people of the member-states have continued to be united, or divided, on statist lines, where language and erstwhile national boundaries coalesce. The example of Turkey and the UK’s insistence on keeping out shows that cultural and ethnic diversity is not even present in the EU in theory. The continent continues to hold its demographic profile as a sacrosanct project, thus keeping out the migrant minorities of differing ethnicities. The EU could never figure out what it wanted to do with the remains of its colonial aspirations once its members were forced to retreat from large parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
It is ironic that in the end the EU got a peace prize for promoting unity when the conglomeration could neither see beyond its borders for promoting unity nor could it come up with path-breaking peace programmes for much of the world. So much so that its powerful members are now keen to bully its own weaker member-states to delay the inevitable during the economic crisis that refuses to go.
The EU was formed on the principles of economic solidarity, most notably at a time when either the national domestic products of smaller nations were contracting and the global profiteering in the post-colonial world had gone in the hands of the US companies. But, while Europe took careful, decisive steps towards becoming the EU, it was always conscious of a shared history and faith in its civilisation project, which defined much of its colonial outlook post-Renaissance. In that sense, the EU was an economic, post-national layer on a historical project which had gone bust during World War II.
Europe has had many options to be more inclusive in its journey towards becoming the EU. It also had the option of offering an alternative to the concept of national sovereignty. But, on most of these counts it has failed to deliver. The term ‘nation-state’ may have gone out of fashion in the European discourse about the EU, but the people of the member-states have continued to be united, or divided, on statist lines, where language and erstwhile national boundaries coalesce. The example of Turkey and the UK’s insistence on keeping out shows that cultural and ethnic diversity is not even present in the EU in theory. The continent continues to hold its demographic profile as a sacrosanct project, thus keeping out the migrant minorities of differing ethnicities. The EU could never figure out what it wanted to do with the remains of its colonial aspirations once its members were forced to retreat from large parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
It is ironic that in the end the EU got a peace prize for promoting unity when the conglomeration could neither see beyond its borders for promoting unity nor could it come up with path-breaking peace programmes for much of the world. So much so that its powerful members are now keen to bully its own weaker member-states to delay the inevitable during the economic crisis that refuses to go.