Viewpoints: Experts comment on EU's Nobel award

Charles Grant: The EU merits the peace prize. Its role in history is unique and positive, and much more important than the inability of the current bunch of leaders to resolve the eurozone's travails. One only has to travel to Asia to understand the EU's value. In South and East Asia several territorial disputes could easily erupt into war.

Many Asians wish they had strong multilateral bodies like the EU, or Nato, that make war among their members inconceivable. If European states disagree they keep holding interminable summits until they find a compromise.

And we should not forget that the EU's eastward enlargement has spread peace, democracy and security across much of the continent.

True, the EU allowed the Balkan wars of the 1990s to fester for too long - but it learned the lesson and developed a peacekeeping capability that has done good work in the Balkans, parts of Africa and elsewhere.