European Union

• 1. Introduction

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  The European Union spans 4,233,255 square kilometres and holds more than 450 million people as of 2025. Its member states produced a nominal gross domestic product of around 18.802 trillion euros in 2025. That figure accounts for roughly one sixth of all economic output on Earth. Scholars struggle to name what the union actually is. They call it sui generis, a thing of its own kind, blending traits of a federation and a confederation at once. It runs on a hybrid of supranational and intergovernmental decision-making. Its laws apply across all member states, but only in those matters where the states have agreed to act as one. How does an entity hold that much power without being a country? Why would sovereign nations hand over pieces of themselves? And what set of treaties, scattered across decades, bound a continent that had twice torn itself apart by war?

• 2. Out Of Two Wars

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  John Maynard Keynes proposed a European customs union in 1920 for the struggling post-war economies. The idea of European unity predated the 19th century, but World War I and its aftermath sharpened it. In 1923 the Paneuropean Union, the oldest organisation for European integration, was founded under Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi. Aristide Briand, Prime Minister of France and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate for the Locarno Treaties, gave a recognised speech at the League of Nations in Geneva on the 5th of September 1929. He called for a federal Europe to settle the historic Franco-German enmity. As large-scale war returned in the 1930s and became World War II, the question of what to fight for had to be agreed. The Declaration of St James's Palace of 1941 gathered Europe's resistance in London. The Atlantic Charter that same year set out the Allies and their common goals. On the 19th of September 1946, Winston Churchill spoke at the University of Zürich. He reiterated his calls since 1930 for a European Union and a Council of Europe. By the war's end, integration was seen as an antidote to the extreme nationalism that had caused the catastrophe.

• 3. Coal, Steel, And The First Treaties

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  The Schuman Declaration of the 9th of May 1950 was essential to the actual birth of the union's institutions. Six nations, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, West Germany, and Italy, followed Robert Schuman and drafted the Treaty of Paris. That treaty created the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952. The founders understood that coal and steel were the two industries essential for waging war. By tying their national industries together, they believed a future war between their nations became far less likely. The community was built on the International Authority for the Ruhr, installed in 1949 to regulate the Ruhr's coal and steel. Backed by the Marshall Plan, with large funds from the United States since 1948, it became the origin of the main EU institutions, including the European Commission and Parliament. In 1957 the same six states signed the Treaty of Rome, creating the European Economic Community and a customs union. They signed a separate pact creating the European Atomic Energy Community, Euratom, for nuclear power. Both treaties came into force in 1958. The European Economic Community was headed by Walter Hallstein. On the 1st of July 1967, the Merger Treaty fused the three communities into a single set of institutions, collectively the European Communities, with Jean Rey presiding over the first merged commission.

• 4. Growing The Map

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  In 1973 the communities took in Denmark, including Greenland, alongside Ireland and the United Kingdom. Norway had negotiated to join at the same time, but Norwegian voters rejected membership in a referendum. The first direct elections to the European Parliament were held in 1979. Greece joined in 1981, and Portugal and Spain in 1986. In 1985 Greenland left the communities after a dispute over fishing rights. That same year the Schengen Agreement paved the way for open borders without passport controls between most member states and some non-members. The Single European Act was signed in 1986. The European Union itself was formally established when the Maastricht Treaty came into force on the 1st of November 1993. Its main architects were Horst Köhler, Helmut Kohl, and François Mitterrand. Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined in 1995. In 2004 came the biggest enlargement yet, when Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined together. Bulgaria and Romania followed in 2007. Croatia became the 28th member in 2013. To join, a country must meet the Copenhagen criteria, agreed at the 1993 European Council meeting in Copenhagen: a stable democracy that respects human rights and the rule of law, a functioning market economy, and acceptance of the obligations of membership.

• 5. Seven Institutions

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  Seven principal bodies run the European Union: the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the Court of Justice, the European Central Bank, and the European Court of Auditors. The European Council sets the broad political direction and convenes at least four times a year. It comprises its president, presently António Costa, the Commission president, and one representative per member state. The European Commission is the executive arm and holds the sole power to propose laws. It has 27 commissioners, one from each member state, led by its president, presently Ursula von der Leyen, reelected for the 2024 to 2029 term. The Council of the European Union forms one half of the legislature, with its presidency rotating between member states every six months. From the 1st of July 2025, Denmark holds it. The European Parliament has 705 members directly elected every five years by proportional representation. The Court of Justice, established in 1952 and based in Luxembourg, is the supreme court in matters of EU law. It has one judge per member state, currently 27, and has been led by president Koen Lenaerts since 2015. Its case law holds that EU law has supremacy over any inconsistent national law.

• 6. The Euro And The Single Market

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  The euro is the official currency in 21 member states. A European single currency became an official objective of the European Economic Community in 1969. The member states signed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, legally bound to fulfil convergence criteria if they wished to join the monetary union. In 1999 the currency union began through a common accounting currency in eleven member states. In 2002 euro banknotes and coins replaced national currencies in 12 of the member states. The eurozone has since grown, and the euro became the second-largest reserve currency in the world after the United States dollar. The single market lets goods, capital, people, and services move freely within the union. Two original core objectives of the European Economic Community were a common market and a customs union. The customs union applies a common external tariff on all goods entering the market. Services account for 60 to 70 per cent of GDP, yet legislation there is less developed than in other areas. The Services in the Internal Market Directive of 2006 aimed to liberalise the cross-border provision of services. The free movement of capital is unique because it is granted equally to non-member states.

• 7. Beyond Borders

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  In 2012 the European Union received the Nobel Peace Prize for contributing to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy, and human rights in Europe. Through the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the union speaks abroad and maintains permanent diplomatic missions worldwide. It represents itself at the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G7, and the G20. The Common Foreign and Security Policy requires unanimity among member states, which sometimes leads to disagreements, such as those over the war in Iraq. The European External Action Service, operational since the 1st of December 2010, serves as a foreign ministry and diplomatic corps. The predecessors of the union were not devised as a military alliance, because NATO was seen as sufficient for defence. Twenty-three EU members belong to NATO, while the rest follow policies of neutrality. Since the withdrawal of the United Kingdom, France is the only member recognised as a nuclear weapon state and the sole holder of a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. In 2025 Europe initiated the ReArm program, a 800 billion euro investment to bolster European equipment production and military readiness. The EU Strategic Compass, adopted in 2022, committed to a 5,000-strong EU Rapid Deployment Capacity.

• 8. Brexit And What Comes Next

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  On the 31st of January 2020 the United Kingdom left the European Union, the only sovereign state ever to do so. A referendum in 2016 saw 51.9 per cent of participants vote to leave. The UK formally notified the European Council on the 29th of March 2017, invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, the basis for any member to leave. Most areas of EU law continued to apply during a transition period that lasted until the 31st of December 2020. After the COVID-19 pandemic, EU leaders agreed for the first time to create common debt to finance a recovery program called Next Generation EU. Agreed in principle by the European Council on the 21st of July 2020 and adopted on the 14th of December 2020, it operates from 2021 to 2026. On the 24th of February 2022, after massing on Ukraine's borders, Russian Armed Forces attempted a full-scale invasion. The European Union imposed heavy sanctions on Russia and agreed a pooled military aid package for Ukraine funded through the European Peace Facility. Preparing for a great enlargement is now a political priority, with the goal of 35 member states by 2030. Nine countries are recognised as candidates: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Turkey, and Ukraine.