An organization of European nations committed to increasing economic integration and political, judicial and social co-operation among its member states. Its founder members of 1958 - Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and The Netherlands - were joined by the UK, Denmark, and the Republic of Ireland (1973), Greece (1981), and Spain and Portugal (1986). East Germany was incorporated on German reunification in 1990, and Austria, Finland and Sweden joined in 1995. In 1993 the 12 European Community members, in accordance with the Maastricht Treaty on European Union (1991), agreed to extend their co-operation in matters of justice, home affairs, and a common foreign and security policy. The UK government was unwilling to agree to all the proposals adopted by the other countries (notably over the single European currency and a common social policy), and a compromise providing opt-out clauses for the UK was devised; of these, only the opt-out concerning the single currency remains. The Union has adopted the principle of subsidiarity or delegation of authority to competent or local institutions wherever possible. The designation European Union in place of European Community was formally introduced in 1993. Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined in 2004 and plans for expansion of membership continue towards 2007 with Bulgaria and Romania, and with Turkey a longer-term prospect. A European constitution was finalized in 2004 after long negotiations among EU governments, its aim to streamline EU institutions following the growth of membership. Member states can ratify the constitution through a referendum or by parliamentary vote. By mid-2005 nine countries had ratified the constitution, but in May/June that year it was rejected by French and Dutch voters. The EU's first military operation took place in March 2003, when it took over NATO's role in Macedonia.
| European Union | |
|
Flag of the European Union |
|
| Motto: In varietate concordia | |
| Anthem: Ode to Joy (orchestral) | |
| EU institution sites |
Brussels (CoEU, EC, and EP) Frankfurt am Main (ECB) Luxembourg (ECoJ and ECoA) Strasbourg (2nd EP) |
| Monetary authority | European Central Bank |
| Capital | Brussels (de facto) |
| Member states | 25 member states, 27 in January 1st of 2007 |
| Official languages | 20 official languages |
| Presidencies | |
|---|---|
| European Council | Matti Vanhanen |
| Council of the EU | Finland |
| European Commission | José Manuel Durão Barroso |
| European Parliament | Josep Borrell Fontelles |
| History | |
| Europe Day | May 9, 1950 |
|
Formation as EEC - Signed - Enforced |
Treaty of Rome - March 25, 1957 - January 1, 1958 |
|
Formation as EU - Signed - Enforced |
Maastricht Treaty - February 7, 1992 - November 1, 1993 |
| Statistics | |
|
Area - Total |
7th if ranked 3,976,372 km² 1,535,286 sq mi |
|
Population - Total (2006) - Density |
3rd if ranked 461,500,000 115.6 people/km² 299.4 people/sq mi |
|
GDP (2006) - Total - Per capita |
1st if ranked $13.31 trillion $28,100 |
|
GDP (2005) - Total - Per capita |
1st if ranked $13.44 trillion |
| HDI (2003) | 0.922 (est.)(22nd if ranked) – high |
| Other information | |
| Currencies |
Euro (EUR or €)
Other currencies: |
| Time zone | UTC 0 to +2 |
| Internet TLD | .eu |
| Calling codes | Not standardised |
| Official Website | http://europa.eu/ |
The European Union (EU) is a supranational and intergovernmental union of 25 independent, democratic member states. The European Union is the world's largest confederation of independent states, established under that name in 1992 by the Treaty on European Union (the Maastricht Treaty).
The Union currently has a common single market consisting of a customs union, a single currency managed by the European Central Bank (so far adopted by 12 of the 25 member states, as of 2007 13 of the 27 member states will have the €), a Common Agricultural Policy, a common trade policy, and a Common Fisheries Policy.
The most important EU institutions include the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the European Court of Justice, the European Parliament, the European Council, and the European Central Bank.
The European Union's activities cover most areas of public policy, from economic policy to foreign affairs, defence, agriculture and trade.
The current and future status of the European Union therefore continues to be subject of political controversy, with widely differing views both within and between member states. For example, in the United Kingdom one poll suggested that around 50% of the population are indifferent to the European Union and 20% voted for parties that wanted to withdraw from the EU in the 2004 EU elections.
At the December 2005 European Council, which is a semi-annual meeting of the heads of state and government of the EU member states, a decision was taken on how it should allocate the EU budget for the next seven years (2007–2013).
Issues controversial during budget debates include the British rebate, France's benefits from the Common Agricultural Policy, Germany and the Netherlands' large contributions to the EU budget, reform of the European Regional Development Funds, and the question of whether the European Parliament should continue to meet once a month in Strasbourg.
The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE), commonly referred to as the European Constitution, is an international treaty intended to create a constitution for the European Union.
Demographics
The European Union is a densely populated, culturally diverse union of 25 member states, constantly expanding and developing.
Member states and enlargement
The European Union's 25 member states cover an area of 3,892,685 square kilometres (1,503,000 sq mi) and have approximately 460 million inhabitants as of December 2004.
On 23 July 1952 six founding members formed the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), which was transformed into the European Community, later renamed to European Union in waves of accession as follows:
| Date | History of countries' membership | Members |
|---|---|---|
| 25 March 1957 | Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, founding members | 6 |
| 1 January 1973 | Denmark, Ireland, United Kingdom | 9 |
| 1 January 1981 | Greece | 10 |
| 1 January 1985 | Greenland withdrew after gaining home rule from Denmark | 10 |
| 1 January 1986 | Portugal, Spain | 12 |
| 3 October 1990 | (The territory of the former German Democratic Republic as part of unified Germany also becomes part of the European Community) | 12 |
| 1 January 1995 | Austria, Finland, Sweden | 15 |
| 1 May 2004 | Cyprus1, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia | 25 |
| 1 January 2007 | Bulgaria, Romania | 27 |
Notes:
Greenland, which was granted home rule by Denmark in 1979, left the European Community in 1985, following a referendum. (See special member state territories and their relations with the EU) 1 European jurisdiction is not currently enforced in Northern Cyprus.Future enlargement and close relationships
Further information: Accession of Bulgaria to the European Union, Accession of Romania to the European Union, Accession of Croatia to the European Union, Accession of Turkey to the European Union, Accession of the Republic of Macedonia to the European Union, Iceland and the European Union, Norway and the European Union, Ukraine and the European Union, and Israel and the European UnionBulgaria and Romania are scheduled to become full members of the European Union on 1 January 2007.
The EFTA states of Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein are members of the European Economic Area which allows them to participate in most aspects of the EU single market without acceding to the EU.
Context (rationale for enlargement and future prospects)
Supporters of the European Union argue that the growth of the EU is a force for peace and democracy. They argue that the wars which were a periodic feature of the history of Western Europe have ceased since the formation of the European Economic Community (which later became the EU) in the 1950s. However, the rejection of the EU Constitution by France and the Netherlands, together with the EU's slow economic growth, have cast doubt on whether the EU will be ready to accept new, far poorer members after 2007.
Institutions and legal framework
EU institutions and bodies
The functioning of the European Union is supported by five major institutions:
The European Parliament (732 members 750 max.) The Council of the European Union (or 'Council of Ministers') (25 members) The European Commission (25 members, with a supporting staff of about 18,000) The European Court of Justice (incorporating the Court of First Instance) (25 judges (& 25 judges of CFI)) The European Court of Auditors (25 members)The European Council (regular summit with 26 members), which is a regular meeting of the 25 head of member states and the European Commission president is sometimes also listed as an institution, although since it lacks its own staff, budget and the legal powers held by the above 5 institutions, it is better described as a "quasi-institution".
There are two financial bodies:
European Central Bank (which alongside the national Central Banks, composes the European System of Central Banks) European Investment Bank (including the European Investment Fund)There are also two advisory committees to the institutions:
Committee of the Regions, advising on regional issues Economic and Social Committee, advising on economic and social policy (principally relations between workers and employers)There are also a great number of more specialized agencies of the European Union, usually set up by secondary legislation, which exist to implement particular policies. Examples are the EUROPOL (the European Police Office), the European Environment Agency, the European Aviation Safety Agency or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market, the Political and Security Committee, established in the context of the Common Foreign and Security Policy, monitoring and advising on international issues of global security.
Location of EU institutions
As soon as the European Economic Community (EEC) was established, political and legal wrangling began over where the European institutions should be located.
Until such time as the member states reached agreement on a single permanent seat for the Community institutions, European officials were distributed between Brussels, Luxembourg and Strasbourg, leading, in particular, to a considerable increase in overheads.
The EU has no official capital and its institutions are divided between several cities:
Brussels — seat of the European Commission and the Council of Ministers. It is also the venue of the European Parliament's committee meetings and mini-sessions and (since 2004) the host city for all European Council summits. Luxembourg City — seat of the European Court of Justice, the Secretariat of the European Parliament and the European Investment Bank.The earliest EU treaty was the Treaty of Paris of 1951 (took effect in 1952) which established the European Coal and Steel Community between an original group of six European countries.
The EU member states have recently agreed to the text of a new constitutional treaty that, if ratified by the member states, would have become the first official constitution of the EU, replacing all previous treaties with a single document.
See also: EU treaties and Treaty establishing a Constitution for EuropeThe role of the European Community within the Union
European Communities: European Community plus Euratom
The term European Communities refers collectively to two entities — the European Economic Community (now called the European Community) and the European Atomic Energy Community (also known as Euratom) — each founded pursuant to a separate treaty in the 1950s. A third entity, the European Coal and Steel Community, was also part of the European Communities, but ceased to exist in 2002 upon the expiration of its founding treaty. Since 1967, the European Communities have shared common institutions, specifically the Council, the European Parliament, the Commission and the Court of Justice. In 1992, the European Economic Community, which of the three original communities had the broadest scope, was renamed the "European Community" by the Treaty of Maastricht.
European Union: European Communities plus CFSP and PJCC
The European Communities are one of the three pillars of the European Union, being both the most important pillar and the only one to operate primarily through supranational institutions.
Effect of Constitutional Treaty
If it had been ratified, the proposed new Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe would have abolished the three-pillar structure and, with it, the distinction between the European Union and the European Community, bringing all the Community's activities under the auspices of the European Union and transferring the Community's legal personality to the Union.
| Evolution of the structures of the European Union. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Intergovernmentalism and supranationalism
A basic tension exists within the European Union between intergovernmentalism and supranationalism.
Main policies
As the changing name of the European Union (from European Economic Community to European Community to European Union) suggests, it has evolved over time from a primarily economic union to an increasingly political one. This trend is highlighted by the increasing number of policy areas that fall within EU competence: political power has tended to shift upwards from the member states to the EU. Harmonisation: member state laws are harmonised through the EU legislative process, which involves the European Commission, European Parliament and Council of the European Union.
The tension between EU and national (or subnational) competence is an enduring one in the development of the European Union. (See also European Free Trade Association (EFTA), European Economic Area (EEA) and Single European Sky.) See table of states participating in some of the initiatives.
The single market has both internal and external aspects:
Internal policies
Free trade of goods and services among member states (an aim further extended to three of the four EFTA states by the European Economic Area, EEA). The establishment of a European Rapid Reaction ForceCo-operation and Harmonisation in other areas
Freedom for citizens of the EU to vote in local government and European Parliament elections in any member state. A common security policy as an objective, including the creation of a 60,000-member European Rapid Reaction Force for peacekeeping purposes, an EU military staff and an EU satellite centre (for intelligence purposes). The EU economy is expected to grow further over the next decade as more countries join the union — especially considering that the new states are usually poorer than the EU average, and have the capacity to grow at a higher rate. The European Council published estimations on 17 November 2005 that the economy of the European Union will have grown approximately 1.5% in 2005 (1.3% in the eurozone), and 2.3% 2006 (2.1% in the eurozone) surpassing earlier growth predictions. The European Council is hopeful that the European Union will grow further in the future;EU member states have agreed a programme called the Lisbon Strategy which aims at making "the EU the world's most dynamic and competitive economy" by 2010.
Economic variation
Below is a table and three graphs showing, respectively, the GDP (PPP), the GDP (PPP) per capita and the GDP (nominal) per capita for the European Union and for each of its 25 member states, sorted by GDP (PPP) per capita.
| Member States |
GDP (PPP) millions of int. dollars |
||
|---|---|---|---|
| European Union | 13,539,374 | 29,338 | 32,900 |
| Luxembourg | 35,194 | 76,025 | 91,927 |
| Ireland | 191,694 | 45,135 | 57,163 |
| Denmark | 203,502 | 37,399 | 54,474 |
| Austria | 298,683 | 36,189 | 41,266 |
| Finland | 179,141 | 34,162 | 41,542 |
| Belgium | 353,326 | 33,908 | 39,331 |
| Netherlands | 549,674 | 33,079 | 42,763 |
| United Kingdom | 2,004,461 | 32,949 | 41,960 |
| Germany | 2,698,694 | 32,684 | 36,779 |
| Sweden | 296,715 | 32,548 | 44,454 |
| France | 1,988,171 | 31,377 | 37,417 |
| Italy | 1,791,006 | 30,383 | 33,078 |
| Spain | 1,203,404 | 28,810 | 31,727 |
| Greece | 274,493 | 24,733 | 24,030 |
| Slovenia | 49,062 | 24,459 | 18,346 |
| Cyprus | 19,692 | 23,419 | 22,046 |
| Malta | 8,447 | 21,081 | 14,598 |
| Portugal | 217,892 | 20,673 | 19,288 |
| Czech Republic | 210,418 | 20,539 | 15,186 |
| Estonia | 25,796 | 19,243 | 12,933 |
| Hungary | 190,343 | 18,922 | 10,914 |
| Slovakia | 101,220 | 18,705 | 11,307 |
| Lithuania | 56,985 | 16,756 | 9,620 |
| Latvia | 34,426 | 15,061 | 10,074 |
| Poland | 556,933 | 14,609 | 9,214 |
| Acceding Countries: | |||
| Bulgaria | 82,533 | 10,844 | 4,075 |
| Romania | 238,926 | 10,152 | 6,338 |
| Candidate Countries: | |||
| Croatia | 61,804 | 13,923 | 10,559 |
| Turkey | 653,298 | 8,839 | 5,417 |
| Macedonia | 17,902 | 8,738 | 3,040 |
| Potential Candidate Countries: | |||
| Bosnia and Herzegovina | 25,505 | 6,884 | 2,774 |
| Albania | 18,329 | 6,259 | 3,175 |
| Serbia | 47,770 | 6,112 | 3,700 |
| Montenegro | 2,412 | 3,800 | 1,784 |
Source: CIA World Factbook
All other figures, source: IMF web site ( 2007 GDP PPP, 2007 per capita GDP PPP, 2007 per capita GDP, current prices).
Criticisms
Language barriers
One major criticism of the EU is that it has 20 official languages for 25 member states (although there are only 3 internal working languages in the European Commission: French, English and German). Their reasoning was explained in this small statement in the introduction:
The evolution of the European Union (EU) from a regional economic agreement among six neighboring states in 1951 to today's supranational organization of 25 countries across the European continent stands as an unprecedented phenomenon in the annals of history.
Lists
Category:European Union (hierarchical list of all EU articles) European Union Statistics Statistics relating to the EU enlargement Largest cities of the European Union by population List of European metropolitan areas by GRP List of European Union-related topics EU Framework Program for Research and Technological Development List of EU states by populationOther
Citizenship of the European Union Concours (Recruitment to EU institutions) Continental union African Union Asian Union North American Union Pacific Union South American Community of Nations Council of Europe Economy of Europe Economy of the European Union Euro Europe European integration European Union as an emerging superpower European Union legislative procedure European Union Microsoft antitrust case Pro-European and Euroscepticism Special member state territories and their relations with the European Union Transatlantic relations United States of Europe Interreg IIIFurther reading
The Economist Guide to the European Union (Profile Books 2005) ISBN 1-86197-930-4 Guide to European Policies by Nicholas Moussis (European Study Service, 2005 - 11th ed.) ISBN 2-930119-40-3 Europe Recast: A History of European Union by Desmond Dinan (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004) ISBN 0-333-98734-9 Understanding the European Union 3rd ed by John McCormick (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) ISBN 1-4039-4451-2 The Institutions of the European Union edited by John Peterson, Michael Shackleton, 2nd edition (Oxford University Press, 2006) ISBN 0-19-927900-5 The Government and Politics of the European Union by Neill Nugent (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) ISBN 0-333-98461-7 The European Union: A Very Short Introduction by John Pinder (Oxford, 2001) ISBN 0-19-285375-9 The United States of Europe: The New Superpower and the end of American Supremacy by T.R. Tarcher, 2004) ISBN 1-58542-345-9 The Great Deception: The Secret History of the European Union by Christopher Booker, Richard North (Continuum International Publishing Group — Academi, 2003) ISBN 0-8264-7105-6 'The Ultimate EU Test Book '(John Harper Publishing, 2005)Notes and references
^ See other official names ^ Only for Eurozone members and EU institutions ^ Not de jure - Brussels is unofficialy referred to as The Capital of the European Union because it is the hub of EU institutions: it hosts the European Commission, the European Council, and the European Parliament. ^ "The EU and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", Opinion by the Commission on the application from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia for membership of the European Union, 09 November 2005.External links and references
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Austria • Belgium • Cyprus • Czech Republic • Denmark • Estonia • Finland • France • Germany • Greece • Hungary • Ireland • Italy • Latvia • Lithuania • Luxembourg • Malta • Netherlands • Poland • Portugal • Slovakia • Slovenia • Spain • Sweden • United Kingdom
Countries acceding on January 1, 2007: Bulgaria • Romania
Candidate countries: Croatia • Turkey • Republic of Macedonia (referred to as "the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia" by the European Union)
Amsterdam · Athens · Berlin · Bratislava · Brussels · Budapest · Copenhagen · Dublin · Helsinki · Lisbon · Ljubljana · London · Luxembourg City · Madrid · Nicosia · Paris · Prague · Riga · Rome · Stockholm · Tallinn · Valletta · Vienna · Vilnius · Warsaw
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