OSLO/LONDON — While some Europeans swelled with pride when the European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize, howls of derision erupted from the continent's large band of skeptics. To many in the 27-nation bloc, the EU is an unwieldy and unloved agglomeration overseen by a top-heavy bureaucracy devoted to creating arcane regulations about everything from cheese to fishing quotas. Set up with noble goals after the devastation of World War II, the EU now appears to critics impotent amid a debt crisis that has widened north-south divisions, threatened the euro currency and plunged several members, from Greece to Ireland to Spain, into economic turmoil. The bloc's financial disarray is threatening the euro — the common currency used by 17 of its members — and even the structure of the union itself. The debt crisis is also fueling the rise of extremist movements such as Golden Dawn in Greece. The party, which opponents brand as neo-Nazi, has soared in popularity as Greece sinks deeper into a debt-fueled morass. “We do not have a position on how to solve these problems, but we send a very strong message that we should keep in mind why we got this Europe after World War II,” Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said. “And that we should do everything we can to safeguard it, not let it disintegrate and let the extremism and nationalism grow again, because we know what catastrophes that all this leads to,” he said. “If the euro starts falling apart, then I believe that the internal market will also start falling apart. And then obviously we get new nationalism in Europe. ... This is not a good scenario.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the Nobel committee had made a “wonderful decision,” and linked it to efforts to salvage the euro even though the judges didn't mention the common currency, specifically. “I often say the euro is more than only a currency. We shouldn't forget this in these weeks and months in which we work for the strengthening of the euro,” Merkel told reporters at the Chancellery in Berlin. The vocal anti-EU politicians burst into a chorus of disdain. “First Al Gore, then Obama, now this. Parody is redundant,” tweeted Daniel Hannan, a euroskeptic European lawmaker — yes, such things exist — from Britain's Conservative Party. President Barack Obama won the peace prize in 2009, less than a year after he was elected, while Gore, a former US vice president, was the 2007 recipient for his campaign against climate change. Nigel Farage, head of the UK Independence Party — which wants Britain to withdraw from the union — called the peace prize “an absolute disgrace.” “Haven't they had their eyes open?” he said, arguing that Europe was facing “increasing violence and division,” with mass protests from Madrid to Athens over tax hikes and job cuts and growing resentment of Germany, the union's rich and powerful economic anchor. And Dutch populist lawmaker Geert Wilders scoffed: “Nobel prize for the EU. At a time (when) Brussels and all of Europe is collapsing in misery. What next?” Britain, which has been an EU member since the 1970s but likes to keep an English Channel-wide distance between itself and the union, gave a muted reaction. Prime Minister David Cameron's office had no comment — a safe policy for the leader of a Conservative Party deeply divided between pro- and anti-EU camps. Some Europeans wondered whether all of the EU's 500 million residents could claim a share of the glory — and the $1.2 million prize money. “I've just won the Nobel Peace Prize? How exciting,” tweeted CNN's British talk show host Piers Morgan. “As a member of the EU, I am delighted to accept the Nobel Peace Prize,” joked British playwright Dan Rebellato on Twitter. “I shall keep it in the spare room, in case people want to look at it.” — Agencies
