EU Nobel Peace Prize: former EP Presidents Pöttering and Buzek to represent EPP Group at ceremony

Former Presidents of the European Parliament Hans-Gert Pöttering MEP and Jerzy Buzek MEP will represent the EPP Group at the Nobel Peace Prize award ceremony in Oslo on Monday. Both welcome the award given this year to the European Union as "recognition of the greatest peace project in modern history".

Speaking prior to the ceremony, Jerzy Buzek (President of the European Parliament 2009-2011), and Hans-Gert Pöttering (President of the European Parliament 2007-2009), said:

"Without the European Union, Europe would not be the peaceful, prosperous and re-united continent it is today and this value of the European project is too often forgotten by the Europeans themselves. But today, all European citizens can be proud, because it is thanks to them that this project has suceeded."

"In the 21st Century, the European project has maintained all its purpose. Today's challenges of globalisation and a global financial crisis, upheavals in the Middle East, violations of human rights and democracy in the EU's neigbourhood and beyond or the need to secure our future energy supply demonstrate that the EU is needed more than ever. No single EU Member State can meet these challenges by itself. The EU must therefore keep promoting democracy, human rights, freedom, rule of law and the standards of a social-market economy, especially in those countries whose citizens aspire to these values even though their leaders remain deaf about them."

"The Nobel Peace Prize to the European Union is a reminder and an obligation that there is only one way forward to continue securing the stability and prosperity of our continent: by uniting peacefully in pursuit of our common good", they added.