German Chancellor Angela Merkel Friday hailed the choice of the crisis-hit European Union for the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize, calling efforts to save the euro a drive to ensure peace on the continent. “I often say that the euro is more than a currency, and we should not forget that these weeks and months we spend working to strengthen the euro,” she told reporters. “The euro is more than a currency because at the end of the day it is about the original idea of a union of peace and of values.” She called the selection of the EU a “wonderful” decision. “With it, the committee honours the idea of European integration. After years of terrible bloodshed, horrible wars, murder and devastation, the Treaty of Rome laid the foundation stone for a European union of peace,” she said, referring to the 1958 pact that paved the way for the EU. “The last decades of peace in Europe — that is a long time for those of us living in the European Union. But for history, it is a blink of an eye. And that is why we must keep working for it.” She added: “I see the fact that the Nobel committee honoured that idea also as an incentive and an obligation for me personally.” As chancellor of Europe’s top economy and the effective paymaster for its bailout funds for stricken eurozone countries, Merkel has emerged as the go-to leader during the three long years of financial turmoil. But her austerity-driven strategy has made her the arch-villain of the crisis in some parts of Europe.
I do not agree with the decision of Nobel committee of awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to European. Don't they know the genocide in Bosnia especially Sarbrenitza where unarmed Muslim males including the children were massacred and the dutch contingent calmly watched this drama. Holland is very much a European country.
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