Why would the EU have won the Nobel Peace Prize? Well, it is the world's largest donor to the developing world, largest contributor to world wide peace keeping and following the collapse of Southern European authoritarian dictatorship in 1974-75 and East European Communism in 1989, has been a major stabiliser and promoter of democracy and economic development in Southern and Eastern Europe.

We are now living through the worst economic crisis since the 1930s. The crisis of the early 1930s resulted in Fascism and the Second World War. Today, we have the European Union and other international institutions like the IMF to stabilise the situation. These did not exist in the 1930s and we under-estimate their effect in preventing conflict.