About the European Union (EU)

The European Union – An Introduction:

The European Union (EU) is a unique family of democratic European countries working together to improve life for their citizens and to build a better world.

In just half a century it has delivered peace and prosperity in Europe, a single currency and a frontier-free 'single market' where people, goods, services and capital can move around freely. It has become a major trading bloc, and a world leader in fields such as environmental protection and is the world's biggest donor of humanitarian aid. The countries that make up the EU (its 'member states') remain independent sovereign nations but they pool their sovereignty in order to gain a strength and world influence none of them could have alone.

Pooling sovereignty means, in practice, that the member states delegate some of their decision-making powers to shared European institutions they have created, so that decisions on specific matters of joint interest can be made democratically at European level.

Institutions:

Europe's three main decision making institutions are:

• The European Parliament (EP), which represents the EU's citizens and is directly elected by them;
• The Council of the European Union, which represents the individual member states;
• The European Commission, which seeks to uphold the interests of the Union as a whole.

The 'institutions', working together as a whole, create the policies and laws that apply throughout the EU. In principle, it is the Commission that proposes new European laws, but it is the Parliament and the Council that enact them.

It is the responsibility of the European Court of Justice to uphold the rule of European law, and the Court of Auditors to check the financing of the Union's activities.

In addition, a number of other institutions and bodies have been created to help make the EU work; amongst them are the European Central Bank, which is responsible for European monetary policy within the 'Euro zone' and the European Ombudsman, who investigates complaints about maladministration by EU institutions and bodies.

The European Union – A Brief History:

The historical roots of the European Union lie in the aftermath of the Second World War. The first steps to European integration were taken in 1952 when six countries (Belgium, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) created a common market in coal and steel known as the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). Their aim was to secure peace between Europe’s nations in the wake of the ravages of WWI and WWII. It brought them together as equals, cooperating within shared institutions.

The success of the ECSC encouraged the founding members of the EU to extend their cooperation and build a European Economic Community (EEC) based on a common market in a wide range of goods and services. Customs duties between the six countries were completely removed and common policies – notably on trade and agriculture – were set up during the 1960s.

Impressed by this venture, Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom joined the Communities - this first enlargement, from six to nine members, took place in 1973. Around the same time, the Communities took on new tasks and introduced new social, regional and environmental policies. Greece joined the Communities in 1981, followed by Spain and Portugal in 1986.

The ‘Treaty on European Union’ (also known as the Maastricht Treaty) came into force in 1993 and the EEC was renamed simply ‘the European Community’ (EC). The Treaty added areas of intergovernmental cooperation to the existing Community system, and thus created the European Union (EU).

Austria, Finland and Sweden joined the EU on 1 January 1995. The Union now had 15 member states.

In the mid-1990s, following the end of the Cold War, the EU received membership applications from the former Soviet bloc countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia), the three Baltic states that had once been part of the Soviet Union (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania), one of the republics of the former Yugoslavia (Slovenia) and two Mediterranean countries (Cyprus and Malta). Membership negotiations were completed in December 2002 and on 1 May 2004 the EU welcomed 10 more countries - Bulgaria and Romania became the newest member states on the 1st of January 2007.

Creating 27 member states and 23 official languages with the addition of Irish, Romanian, and Bulgarian, today's EU embraces 27 countries and over 492 million citizens.

Even after more than half a century the European Union remains essentially what it always has been; a family of democratic European countries, committed to working together for peace and prosperity.