Brussels, 03/12/2012 (Agence Europe) - Ana Fanlo Vicente, a 12-year old from Spain, 16 year old Italian Elena Nicoletta Garbujo, Ilona Zielkowski, 21 years old, from Poland, and 23 year old Larkin Zahra from Malta will be present alongside the presidents of the European Council, European Commission and European Parliament and a number of European heads of state or government at the ceremony in Oslo to see the presentation of the Nobel Peace Prize, awarded to the EU on 12 October, (see EUROPE 10709), The four are the winners of the drawing and writing competition organised for the occasion by the European institutions and the European Youth Forum.
While the attendance in Oslo of the presidents of the three European institutions is definite, the same cannot be said for EU heads of state and government. Between eight and ten have said they will attend and a slightly smaller number have indicated they will not, Nobel Institute Director Geir Lundestad told AFP. Lundestad declined to say who had indicated that they would attend and those who had chosen not to be present, stating that the list was changing “day by day”. It is known that German Chancellor Angela Merkel will attend and that UK Prime Minister David Cameron will be absent.
“Illegal” Nobel peace prize? On Thursday of last week, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, of South Africa, who was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1984, and two other laureates, Mairead Maguire (1976) and Adolfo Perez Esquivel (1980), sent a letter to the Nobel Foundation in which they say the EU should not receive the 2012 prize. The EU is “clearly not one of the 'champions of peace' Alfred Nobel had in mind” when he created the prize, the three state, arguing that the EU does not work for demilitarised global order. (OL/transl.fl)