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[Lyn Farel]

I think it has always been quite obvious that it becomes a whole less hot for immigrating minorities in most countries.

[Nmaro Makari]

I think it has always been quite obvious that it becomes a whole less hot for immigrating minorities in most countries.

To varying degrees but true. You've missed the point though; These things work against the EU being a peace prize candidate. In fact, the notion that this peace prize is awarded to an institution rather than a person is ridiculous. Saying the EU deserves this prize is basically saying "Well, lets all just forget about the EU's failure in the Balkans, or the fact that many of its people are discriminated against on a daily basis, or all the other stuff that's undermined peace. We're just going to pretend that didnt happen ok?"

Tl;dr: The problem with awarding the prize to an institution, particularly a political one, is that you have to take into account everything they have contributed to the goals of the prize. The EU's contributions are a mixed bag.

[Vikarion]

You have to be careful with those metrics. Some of them (like infant mortality) are reported differently by European countries in order to give a different impression to the world than might otherwise be perceived.

Oh, can you enlighten us? Quickest source I've found was of course on wikipedia  ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate ), where the list is published and estimated by an extremely anti-US source. 

LOL. Well, I'm not saying that all of the statistics are invalid, to be sure. However, some...creative interpretation...does exist. For example, (last I checked) the United States and Canada considers any birth, whether premature, deformed, or whatever, to be a "live birth". Therefore, any infant that dies after being born is considered a unit for the infant mortality statistic. On the other hand, in France (and a lot of other European countries), if a baby is born dangerously premature, it is excluded from the "live births" and consigned to the "stillbirth" category - unless it survives.

This, as you might imagine, skews things a bit, as premature babies are the least likely to survive. However, if we correct for this sort of statistical cheating, the United States has one of the best infant survival rates. Another way - and probably the best way currently to analyze infant health, is to consider perinatal survival rates, in which case the United States is doing quite well, and many European countries are revealed to be doing much worse.

[lallara zhuul]

I just have to emphasize our friends across the Atlantic...

Pretty much everything here is different than in your own nation.

Religion.
Minorities.
Culture.

Very few people are really involved in religion in Europe.
Very few people let it dictate their worldview.
There is cultural differences in nations that are built around Protestant mentality and Catholic/Orthodox.

None of the minorities in Europe are striving to be part of an 'European Dream' or part of an 'Europe spanning culture'.
There is no equivalent to African-American, or any prefix-American in Europe.

Which kind of leads to the Culture.

There is no Europe spanning culture.
There is no Europe spanning ideals.
There is no shared media outlet that can indoctrinate Europeans to think that they are sharing anything.

Just the currency, just co-operation between different nations to build bridges and nowadays just the debts.

EU is a cod.

[Desiderya]

LOL. Well, I'm not saying that all of the statistics are invalid, to be sure. However, some...creative interpretation...does exist. For example, (last I checked) the United States and Canada considers any birth, whether premature, deformed, or whatever, to be a "live birth". Therefore, any infant that dies after being born is considered a unit for the infant mortality statistic. On the other hand, in France (and a lot of other European countries), if a baby is born dangerously premature, it is excluded from the "live births" and consigned to the "stillbirth" category - unless it survives.

LOL indeed. 

Of course it does exist somewhere, somewhen. Everyone who makes a statistic uses different parameters - if only slightly - and it's no secret that agendas can bleed through the numbers.
I fail to see how this is relevant, though, since any tampering to make oneself appear better - like you've claimed is done regularily - should be disappearing in statistics compiled by non-domestic sources,  such as the two I've linked, no?

[Lyn Farel]

I think it has always been quite obvious that it becomes a whole less hot for immigrating minorities in most countries.

To varying degrees but true. You've missed the point though; These things work against the EU being a peace prize candidate. In fact, the notion that this peace prize is awarded to an institution rather than a person is ridiculous. Saying the EU deserves this prize is basically saying "Well, lets all just forget about the EU's failure in the Balkans, or the fact that many of its people are discriminated against on a daily basis, or all the other stuff that's undermined peace. We're just going to pretend that didnt happen ok?"

Tl;dr: The problem with awarding the prize to an institution, particularly a political one, is that you have to take into account everything they have contributed to the goals of the prize. The EU's contributions are a mixed bag.

I do not think I have missed the point. Your tl;dr is absolutely correct. No instutions of governemental magnitude I know of can claim to have achieved nothing else than peace. Which is why I found that weird too.

I may be wrong but I don't think the EU got involved in any way in the Balkans war. NATO, and UN, sure, but the EU... ? Also, what does the EU have to do with discrimination in the first place ? Aren't the national governements more responsible for this at the current time ? It starts to get quite complicated when we speak about an upper layer of governement that does not have a full control of the laws and what happens in the territory of each member state, far from it.

Or when we say EU, are we speaking about the very people that live inside ? Are we speaking about the people, the whole, or just the european institution and what it stands for ? Personally, I don't know here...

[BloodBird]

I nearly lost all faith in the Nobel committee last time, when Obama was just handed the prize before he had had time to even lift a finger and do anything at all.

This time, it feels as if the prize was far more deserved, but honestly still leave a taste of 'the hell, wasn't there anyone else who deserved it more?'

Well, it remains to be seen. Least I won't have to spend a couple weeks being ashamed of my nation this time around, that's always something.

[Natalcya Katla]

At least this one won't result in a diplomatic shitstorm like the one we had with China.

Other countries need to learn that the Nobel Peace Prize committee's selection of prize winners is not subject to review and censorship by Norwegian national authorities.

[Vikarion]

I fail to see how this is relevant, though, since any tampering to make oneself appear better - like you've claimed is done regularily - should be disappearing in statistics compiled by non-domestic sources,  such as the two I've linked, no?

No. The statistics for countries such as the above are compiled off of (almost always) the self-reporting of countries. If measures as the above are used, then the statistics become useless for rankings.

[Gesakaarin]

For some reason when I read this I thought it was a PR stunt to shore up support for the EU given the current difficulties they're facing. Or is it a medal for not starting yet another continental conflict by any of its members in contravention to almost a millenia of European history? I think US policy and the Cold War had more to maintaining the peace in Europe post-1945.

That's beside the point that if the intent of the EU is to create a democratic European Federation then they should work towards that first by actually convincing national electorates by promoting the benefits of Federation and moving on from there. Unified currency should have been the last step not the first one because it seems most of the current problems with the EU stem from forcing countries like Greece, Spain, Portugal etc., to compete with economies like France and Germany without the ability to devalue their currencies to promote investment and growth.

When countries go bankrupt it only increases sentiments that run counter to any concept of European unification aside from the fact many Europeans seem to identify with their own national identities and not any actual sense of being, "European" before that.

[Desiderya]

No. The statistics for countries such as the above are compiled off of (almost always) the self-reporting of countries. If measures as the above are used, then the statistics become useless for rankings.

That's your claim.
Please explain why North Korea isn't first place in everything.

Also: Using self-reported raw data is different to using self-created statistics (sets of data).

[Vikarion]

No. The statistics for countries such as the above are compiled off of (almost always) the self-reporting of countries. If measures as the above are used, then the statistics become useless for rankings.

That's your claim.
Please explain why North Korea isn't first place in everything.

Also: Using self-reported raw data is different to using self-created statistics (sets of data).

Because no one accepts NK's claims, if NK even bothers to make them. Not because of credibility so much, but because NK has no pull in international circles to ensure acceptance. The Soviet Union used to get away with making untrue claims all the time - one reason for the CIA's drastic overestimation of the U.S.S.R.'s abilities.

This isn't private knowledge, either. You can go look up how European countries report post-natal deaths vs how the U.S. and Canada do.

Here's a Unicef report on the misreporting of central and eastern European infant mortality rates: http://www.unicef-irc.org/publications/pdf/iwp95.pdf

Note that those rates have been accepted in the past, despite their lack of credibility.

I'll try to get some more sources, but I have to head to work.

[Desiderya]

No need to bother, tbh.
Your link focuses on
a) post-communism states ( Also: being in geographical europe isn't the same as being in the european union )
b) analyzes the situation prior to EU membership. ( Data is from 2001, the work was published in 2003 )

But at any rate, I've never claimed that you're incorrect about the differences how the official statistics are put up and that there are indeed motivations to appear better. Although I'd say the motivation to appear better would be to get into the EU, not to make the EU look better to the rest of the world.
Also you weren't exactly using Poland, Latvia and the latest bunch of joiners as an example but were targeting a founding member.

So we can refrain from going "Nuh-huh" at each other since it'll boil down to "It's not true because the EU fakes its statistics.".
With that I'm done with that topic derailment. Or take a look at crime rates (or intentional homicide - I'm sure there's been a EU memo to fake these statistics, too).
As such - over and out.

[orange]

Des, click on the second link in the Wikipedia article you provided.  That page discusses the differences Vikarion mentioned.

[Vikarion]

So we can refrain from going "Nuh-huh" at each other since it'll boil down to "It's not true because the EU fakes its statistics.".
With that I'm done with that topic derailment. Or take a look at crime rates (or intentional homicide - I'm sure there's been a EU memo to fake these statistics, too).
As such - over and out.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that the EU statistics for violent crime are measured with methods similar to U.S. ones. You seem to be under the impression that I have some grudge against the EU, or, for that matter, some argument with the idea of Europe being a pleasant place to live. I don't. My values and morals don't lead me to consider whether a society is the most pleasant place to live to be the highest end of a society, so such comparisons are relatively less important to me. I just note that some of the traditional measures of such may not be measured similarly between societies.

I do tend to find many European countries and many Europeans to be...not to my taste, and I oppose attempts to import European modes of thought and ideals to the United States, but I'm not in the habit of constructing fanciful visions of evil EU bureaucrats falsifying data for the sake of better WHO comparisons. What I said can be backed up with evidence. If you could lend me the favor of not constructing your own vision of some obese white Texan inventing stories so he can put 'murica on a pedestal, I would be most appreciative.