European Union

Europe (Brussels)

Nobel Prize in Peace, 2012International

Awarded for

Over six decades of advancing peace, reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe

The story behind the prize

The EU's forerunners were designed to make war between France and Germany 'materially impossible' by pooling coal and steel. The committee praised its role in reconciliation and in spreading democracy to Southern and Eastern Europe. The prize came during the eurozone debt crisis.

About

Political and economic union of European countries that grew out of the European Coal and Steel Community (1951).