The European Union, facing its worst crisis in decades, pledged to put its house in order to maintain Europe at peace for the next generation as its leaders collected the bloc’s contested Nobel peace award.

Europe’s economic woes, its fiery protests, relentless job cuts and angry youths provided the backdrop to the lavish Nobel awards ceremony in snowy Oslo attended by a score of EU heads of state and government, including historic Franco-German couple Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande.

“Peace must not be taken for granted,” said Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland whose country ironically has stubbornly refused to join the EU.

It was France and Germany turning the page on war 60 years ago that set the stage for the EU to grow from six nations to 28 next year when Croatia becomes the latest Balkan nation to join the bloc, in a fresh signal of the European Union’s contribution to peace.

Hollande and Merkel, though currently at odds over the EU’s way out of the crisis, stood up together hands clasped amid a long ovation as speeches harked back repeatedly to the peace which has settled over the continent in the past decades.

But the Nobel Committee has been criticised for handing the prestigious award to the half-a-billion strong bloc in times of political division and social tension.

“The test Europe is currently facing is real,” acknowledged EU President Herman Van Rompuy, one of three EU officials to pick up the Nobel medal, diploma and near million-euro prize.

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