Three Nobel Peace Prize laureates, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have contested the awarding of this year's prize to the European Union, saying the 27-nation bloc contradicts the values associated with the prize because it relies on military force to ensure security.
In an open letter to the Nobel Foundation, Tutu of South Africa, Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland and Adolfo Perez Esquivel from Argentina demanded that the prize money of 8 million kronor ($1.2 million) not be paid out this year.
The EU "clearly is not one of 'the champions of peace' Alfred Nobel had in mind" when he created the prize by including it in his will in 1895, they wrote in the letter, a copy of which was acquired by the AP on Friday. "We ask the board of the foundation to clarify that it cannot and will not pay the prize from its funds."
They said the EU condones "security based on military force and waging wars rather than insisting on the need for an alternative approach."