David Allen Green asserts (not argues) that, "The United Kingdom is economically better off in than out."
I'd like to see his arguments!
The EU's being awarded a Nobel Peace Prize is a farce. Perhaps it got the award for Germany’s role in bringing war to Yugoslavia by recognising Croatia. Perhaps for Britain’s and France’s bombing Libya in support of Al-Qaeda-linked Islamists. Perhaps for backing more Al-Qaeda-linked Islamists in Syria. Perhaps for the EU’s economic wars against Greece, Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Italy, or perhaps for its sanctions (which are, in law, acts of war) against Cuba, Iran and other countries that don’t obey the USA, or perhaps for its Economic Partnership Agreements that ravage the economies of countries in Asia and Africa.

What kept the peace before the EEC was founded in 1957? What really kept the peace, in fact, ever since 1945? A clue is that Europe’s first war since 1945, the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia, only happened after the demise of the Soviet Union.

Perhaps the EU does not deserve the prize but compared to Obama for simply being elected, let alone Henry Kissenger this is a sensible desrving award.

We often hear the claim that the EU has prevented war between its members. Rubbish. Are we really to believe that - without the EU - France and Germany would have gone to war with each other in the 50s or 60s?

And what about us? We were not a member until 1973, but I don't remember us threatening to invade any Western European democracy.

It also strikes me that the USA and Japan haven't been at war with each other for a while. Should these governments get a peace prize too?

Of course it's more complicated than that, and it probably wouldn't stand up in court. But the EU is the nearest thing on which you can hang the slow movement away from a divided and war torn continent towards a peaceful and prosperous nation.

You can't give a prize to an idea, or "the European Movement", so the EU is given the prize in place of the idea/movement. That movement has brought peace, within its borders, among what were previously the world's most warlike nations. It has expanded democracy into countries previously under dictatorship and kept them democratic. It has increased prosperity, allows us free(ish) movement and has protected human rights, worker rights and consumer rights.

No, it wasn't *called* the EU, but the EU is what the father's of the EU envisaged as a remedy for the "vast, quivering mass of tormented, hungry, careworn and bewildered human beings, who wait in the ruins of their cities and homes and scan the dark horizons for the approach of some new form of tyranny or terror." (Churchill). Europe was in a pitiful state before the European Movement got underway. WW2 was just the latest, and worst, of a constant series of wars. A unified Europe (Churchill again: "a kind of United States of Europe") has helped, and will continue to help prevent state of affairs coming back.

The Nobel Prize is a little bit of recognition of that fact. We should be happy, we should be *patriotic*. We should echo the end of Churchill's speech:

"Let Europe arise!"

Until the 1950's, war in Europe - particularly between France and Germany - occurred regularly - for many hundreds of years. Robert Schumann and Jean Monet founded the European Coal and Steel Community (the forrunner to the EU) to prevent war in Europe through closer economic integration between states. I think it has been pretty successful. It is now inconcievable that members of the EU could go to war with each other.

Well, this *is* a prize that was given to Barack Obama simply for "not being George W Bush". A man who has since pursued the classic American "peace through superior firepower" (in this case, drone strikes) doctrine

A sorry reflection on the award itself, and the state of US politics today.

Many British soldiers have lost their lives in European conflicts. This is not an occasion to carp, but to be happy it is no longer necessary for Great Britain to have to sort out wars on Belgian and French soil). The founders of the what is now called the EU shaped it exactly to achieve peace. What happened in Yugoslavia was dreadful, I am not discounting that, but I think of this award as something that celebrates no war in West Europe for sixty years. And that is unheard of in recent history.

Wasn't the establishment of the EEC twofold? To encourage trade between states and prevent future war? Maybe it's chicken and egg but you might be underestimating the calming effects of enmeshed trade agreement between neighbours. The EU is no mere cartel. Dubbing it a trading organisation plays down the role of the ECB which seems to be day-by-day working to prevent infectious economic collapse and civil war in European countries worst affected by the recession.

The conflicts in former Yugoslavia were a dreadful international failure but nonetheless 100 million people were killed by wars between core EU states in the fifty years preceding the establishment of the EEC, none afterwards. The idea of Britain, France and Germany going to war with each other seems unimaginable now. Also, given the UN's depressing toothlessness at enforcing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I'm not sure the ECHR would command the respect they do if it weren't for the solidity of the EU.

That's a very English perspective. In reality, on the Continent, the EU is much more than a trading organisation - especially within the Schengen area. In fact, one of the things that struck me most coming from Germany to the UK was the sense of splendid isolation, a lack of links to the wider EU community.

As far as I can see, the prize was mainly given for the work on European integration and unity, and is intended to show support for the EU in extremely difficult times. Don't forget that the integration of Germany into the EU was a hard task, followed by absorbing the post-communist Eastern states.

That said, I hope that the Russian contenders are next.