With news coverage focusing on the ongoing euro crisis, demonstrators protesting austerity in the streets of European capitals, and commentators predicting the breakup of our union, the European Union may not have seemed the most obvious choice for the Nobel Peace Prize.
And yet the Nobel Committee announced the EU would receive the award for having "contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe," recalling "what can happen if disintegration starts and if we let extremism and nationalism start growing again in Europe."
This was a timely reminder of the need to learn the lessons of history. My generation was fortunate not to be called upon, like previous generations, to fight other Europeans, but to work together for our common future.
For this we owe a debt to the visionary founding fathers of the European Union. The origin and raison d'être of the EU as a peace process for war-torn Europe is often overlooked. It is sometimes forgotten that economic integration among the nations of Europe was originally a means to an end -- peace, democracy, prosperity -- not an end in itself.
In 1973, the year that the UK, Ireland and Denmark joined what we then called the "Common Market," I decided to study European Integration. I could see how religious bigotry and intolerance between nationalists and unionists were tearing apart my home city of Belfast.
Twenty years later EU membership brought Ireland and the UK together in a way that was unprecedented in history, and helped restore the confidence and trust to build a peace process in Northern Ireland.
As our Nobel laureate poet Seamus Heaney put it, "Once in a while a tidal wave of justice rises up, and hope and history rhyme."
The EU has already largely delivered more than 50 years of peace in a part of the world that had unleashed two world wars. It has grown from 6 to 27 member countries, expanding to 28 next year, all of which are committed to peace for our 500 million citizens.
Today we have a union founded on shared values and the rule of law with a heart that beats for freedom, democracy and human rights.
The continent that was for many years divided by an iron curtain is now united. When we held a party of delegation staff to celebrate news of the Nobel Prize, our colleagues from the Czech Republic poignantly told us how much it meant for them when their country became a member of the European Union.
Our challenge now, as veterans and survivors of World War II pass on, is to make sure that people born today in Europe understand that this peace we have known for more than 5 decades cannot be taken for granted. It was and remains a conscious and deliberate choice.
Europe gets a lot of flak for taking time to make decisions, but we have learned the price of conflict and the value of consensus. It is time well spent, a model that has served us well and, I believe, a good inspiration for other regions in the world.
The values that united and guided the EU from war to peace have become values we project outside our borders; which others around the world want to embrace.
We are grateful to the Nobel Committee for reminding us what the European Union really stands for -- peace, democracy and human rights. Here in Bangladesh our delegation team is heartened in its everyday work to encourage peace and stability -- for example in supporting the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord, promoting free and fair elections, and assisting those who strive every day to improve respect for human rights. And we are proud of being the world's largest single market -- the destination of 57% of Bangladesh's exports, and the top provider of development grants and humanitarian aid to this country.
The political will that founded our union 6 decades ago remains. We are tackling our current crisis -- a comprehensive approach involving both direct help to the debt-burdened countries and a more fundamental overhaul with a focus on increased fiscal coordination, integration of our banking and financial sectors, and enhanced competitiveness for our economies.
It is by no means an easy task. Just as after the war, we need more European integration, not less. Our member states remain committed to this path because together we are more than the sum of our parts.
Many Bangladeshis have congratulated us on the award of this prize. I have found that people know about it all over the country. Whenever we talk about the values of democracy, human rights and peace -- whether we are in a remote village in Sirajganj or at a workshop in Dhaka, there is great interest.
As a young Bangladeshi put it to me recently, "There is a great demand for these values." Indeed, young people in Bangladesh may understand better than some young Europeans what this award is all about.
Bangladesh can count on the European Union to support its development through trade and aid, and also to work with it at the global level to face climate change and other challenges of the 21st century. In all these areas you can expect the European Union to remain a committed and reliable partner.

The writer is the European Union Ambassador to Bangladesh.