Though it must be very difficult, the Nobel committee always seems to find an absurd winner for their annual peace prize, and this year’s selection of the EU continues that tradition. Dalrymple comments in the Australian:
Thanks to the EU, Europe faces a stark choice between the Scylla of debauching its currency, with all the dislocations that rapid and perhaps uncontrollable inflation brings in its wake, or the Charybdis of fiscal rectitude that will strangle the economies of those countries whose government plays a predominant role in the economy…Whatever solution, or rather policy, is chosen, it cannot be democratically acceptable to every country in Europe: the will of some country or countries must prevail over others. This is not a recipe for peace. Transfer payments between regions of countries are already tearing them apart. Catalonia wants to secede from Spain and Flanders from Belgium, but the recipients of Catalonia’s and Flanders’ largesse do not want them to secede. Yet what has been created in Europe is a Greater Belgium, to which indeed it would be a good idea to change the name of the European Union: the GB instead of the EU.The Greater Belgium is the best we can hope for, with its interminable but peaceful quarrels over language and subsidies from productive to unproductive parts. More likely we will get Yugoslavia, with nasty little wars to re-establish national sovereignty. If there were a Nobel prize for the creation of conditions for conflict and war, then it could be awarded to the EU without irony or satire.