video transcript

The European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize for its long-term role in uniting the continent, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced on Friday (October 12), an award seen as morale boost for the bloc as it struggles to resolve its debt crisis. Nobel Peace Prize Committee Chairman Thorbjoern Jagland made the announcement in Oslo. "The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2012 is to be awarded to the European Union. The Union and its forerunners have for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe. ... The Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to focus on what it sees as the European Union's most important result: the successful struggle for peace and reconciliation and for democracy and human rights. The stabilizing part played by the European Union has helped to transform most of Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace. The work of the European Union represents fraternity between nations, and amounts to a form of the peace congresses to whichAlfred Nobel refers as criteria for the Peace Prize in his 1895 will." The prize, worth $1.2 million, will be presented in Oslo on December 10.