The European Union

The European Union (EU) is a unique institutional framework for the construction of a united Europe. It was created after centuries of strife to finally unite the nations of Europe.

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In 1950 French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman announced a plan, proposing the pooling of European coal and steel production under a common authority. The Schuman Declaration was regarded as the first step towards achieving a united Europe. Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands accepted the French proposal, and signed the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) Treaty in 1951. In 1954 the plan to create a European Defense Community (EDC) was refused by the French parliament and as a result it collapsed. In its place the Western European Union (WEU) was created as a sub-group of NATO.

Encouraged by the success of the ECSC, European leaders decided to continue the unification of Europe on the economic front. Two more Treaties were established in 1957: The European Economic Community (EEC) to merge separate national markets into a single market that would ensure the free movement of goods, people, capital and services with a wide measure of common policies, and the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) to further the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Through the Treaty establishing a Single Council and a single Commission of the European Communities (Merger Treaty) of 1965, the institutions of the ECSC, the EEC and EURATOM were merged with the aim of strengthening the political influence of the Council and the Commission and streamlining the work of the Community intitutions.

With the single European Act of 1986, the Treaty on European Union signed in Maastricht in 1992 and the new Treaty of Amsterdam of 1997, further steps have been taken towards the unification of Europe.

The Maastricht Treaty laid the foundations for economic and monetary union, the third and final stage of which began upon the introduction of a common currency, the EURO, on 1 January 1999. Europe has thus become the one of the world’s largest single-currency areas (United States; Japan; Europe), in terms of breadth and depth of its financial marlets. Since the Maastricht Treaty came into force, moreover, the European Union (EU) has had a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and a common policy in the fields of justice and home affairs. Thus the preconditions have been created for the development of the EU into a truly comprehensive political and monetary union. Today, Europe is constructing its own model for unification, ensuring respect for its richest asset - the historical, cultural and linguistic diversity of the European nations.

After nearly fifty years, with four waves of accessions (1973: Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom; 1981: Greece; 1986: Spain and Portugal; 1995: Austria, Finland and Sweden), the EU today has 25 Member States after its fifth enlargement, this time towards Eastern and Southern Europe (Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus).

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