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Suzanne Plunkett / Reuters
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, left, European Council President Herman van Rompuy and European Parliament President Martin Schulz, seen here on Sunday, will receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the European Union in Oslo on Monday.
Updated at 9:20 a.m. ET: OSLO, Norway -- The European Union received the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday, as the Norwegian committee looked beyond Europe's current malaise to recognize its decades of stability and democracy after the horrors of two world wars.
Fittingly for an institution with no single leader, the EU sent three of its presidents to the Oslo ceremony for the 2012 prize, which critics including former Nobel laureate Desmond Tutu say is undeserved.
About 20 European government leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, also attended the ceremony.
"Sixty years of peace. It's the first time that this has happened in the long history of Europe," Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, said before the ceremony.
"The facts prove that the European Union is a peacekeeping instrument of the first order," said Van Rompuy, who was on hand to collect the prize along with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and Martin Schulz, the president of the European Parliament.
The EU has been awarded the Nobel Prize for its role in uniting the continent after two World Wars. ITV's James Mates reports.
Two Americans win Nobel for work on matching different economic agents
Economic pain
Europe is suffering feeble economic growth or outright recession, soaring unemployment and a number of its member states are unable to pay their debts. It has been called the worst economic crisis since World War II.
The economic pain has provoked social unrest in a number of member states, notably near-bankrupt Greece.
However, the Nobel committee focused on the EU's role in reconciling the disparate, warring corners of the "old continent" -- the overarching success being to turn Germany and France from enemies into allies.
From just six countries that agreed to pool their coal and steel production in the 1950s to 27 member states today -- and 28 once Croatia joins next year -- the EU now stretches from Portugal to Romania, Finland to Malta and sets rules and regulations that have a bearing on more than 500 million people.
"The stabilizing part played by the EU has helped to transform most of Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace," the Nobel committee said on Oct. 12 when it announced the EU had won, an unexpected decision.
Complete coverage of Europe on NBCNews.com
The prize money of $1.25 million will be given to projects that help children struggling in war zones, with the recipients to be announced next week. The EU has said it will match the prize money, doubling the sum to be given to selected aid projects.
The awarding of the prize to the EU has provoked criticism from some quarters.
Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com
Three Peace Prize laureates -- Tutu, Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland and Adolfo Perez Esquivel from Argentina -- have demanded that prize money of $1.2 million not be paid this year. They said the bloc contradicts the values associated with the prize because it relies on military force to ensure security.
Amnesty International said Monday that EU leaders should not "bask in the glow of the prize," warning that xenophobia and intolerance are now on the rise in Europe.
The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded each year in Oslo on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel's death in 1896. Similar ceremonies are to be held in the Swedish capital, Stockholm, for the Nobel laureates in medicine, chemistry, physics and literature.
The decision to award the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU was met with confusion among those who have witnessed Europe's economic crisis, and deep unrest. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Mr. Nobel, after inventing dynamite and giving it to the world, was worried that his name would go down in history as the father of bombs, death and war. He initiated the Nobel Peace prize to be given to those whose efforts towards peace, not war, had a positive effect on mankind to associate his name with peace.
Now that I see how these boobs are living high on his money instead of safeguarding and investing it properly so that it would always be there for future prizes, and after seeing the debacle of the award go to Mr. Obama, it tells me Mr. Nobel's legacy is not long for this world.
Before any of you political nutjobs jump on this, I have been in favor of Mr. Obama's work, especially the good ending of bin Laden. But those actions negate his qualification for a "peace" prize.
The peace prize for Obama was a joke.
obama gets the Nobel for doing nothing! And if you examine his first term and campaign tactics this year, we see he has harmed our country more than any previous president by his faux class warfare strategy! By all that the Nobel Prize stands for... his should be rescinded! But of course that will never happen.
Continental PEACE. The last War was WWII?? I guess they don't want to remember CROTIA & The SERBS 1991-1995. Quite a few Americans killed there also.
I am from Bosnia and i was part of that war.. My question is what continent are we from. Europe really did not do much in stooping that war.. I do have to give credit the for US involvement..
deweydan Exactly, they totally erased from their memories the Balkan's War with all the massacres and bombings, they can also consider 60 years of peace if they don't count their military involvement in other parts of the world.
I think that this is the sort of thing where cuts should be made. Yes, the small businesses (caterers, chauffeurs, decorators, etc.) will not make as much, but no one's going to go hungry for it.
That's OK. The award has less meaning now.
Even if the award was not given by the will of late Alfred Nobel, this is a great triumph for the EU which predecessor was created to ensure that Germany and France (and their allies) never start another war against each other.
After hundreds (thousands) of years spent with wars and bloodshed, we have have peace now. This make me a happy and proud EU citizen.
When one considers the name, Nobel Peace Prize, too bad some of that money isn't also given to those who actually are making a difference in the world towards peace.
The Nobel Committee could actually send the winners an email and direct deposit the funds in their bank accounts -- except the recipients probably want the cash so they can hide it from the governmental tax collectors. The awards have been given out to some pretty lame choices over the last few years, and it is only a matter of time before Bashar al Assad gets the Nobel peace prize for allowing Iran and Russia to kill his civilians while he denies any involvement.
in my experience, as someone who lives both in the u.s. and europe, it strikes me that this award was truly deserved. all my fellow americans have become nut jobs, screaming mindlessly about president obama, or about his red-shirted adversaries. we have, in america, lost the concepts of peace and civility, and we are headed for very serious, self-inflicted, trouble. we don't even know what it is that we're fighting each other about.
I used to agree with your name mr eurocool.We do not need new people for every post who are always in a state of learning the ropes or being sent home
pained1, i couldn't agree more. what we need - for a change, are honest, learned, hard-working, dedicated, citizen statesmen as our founding fathers were, themselves, and as were envisioned by them to continue their great experiment. It would be a good idea to start by seeing that The Federalist Papers be read by every American.
Europe has exported too much negatives: bomb, wars, hatred, financial domination, racism, ethnocentrism etc.. to be awarded anything for 100 years. What is this? The vicar's tea party?
And the rest of the world is no better either.
I wonder what Nobel would think and say about environmental issues within the context of Peace for humankind?
About half of the Nobel Peace and Literature prizes are a joke. Including this one.
"Peaceful" Europe rides on the coattails of American military strength.
you must be reading 50-year-old newspapers.
Absolutely, The US has bankrupted itself with spending on defense and wars while Europe has instead devoted their wealth to social programs. (possible because of the protection provided by US military might) Of course the gravy train is over in Europe too as we are all doomed to bankruptcy if some fiscal control is not instituted.
Nobel Peace Prize!? Why because the Germans have not invaded France lately? I think I recently remember some EU members dropping a few bombs in Libya. Not to mention a few Europeans in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is kinda like giving the prize to Massachusetts and South Carolina (after all they haven't fought since 1865) while citizens of those states are on the other side of the world fighting in a war!
......thank you America, for all your sacrifices, leadership and money for the last sixty eight years which allowed Europe to continue to exist...
Bravo to Tom-1002719 for telling it like it is!
Right, they found a way to pump their egoes and wallet while greasing each other with baby oil and make it look legitimate!? Amazing nerves.
Be careful not to slip on the blood of AMERICANS with which your soil is saturated
"Europe the continent of peace since WWII"
Except for those minor events in the Balkans, the silly Soviet incursions into Hungary and Czechoslovakia...