European Union Popular Books

European Union Biography & Facts

The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe. The Union has a total area of 4,233,255 km2 (1,634,469 sq mi) and an estimated total population of over 448 million. The EU has often been described as a sui generis political entity (without precedent or comparison) combining the characteristics of both a federation and a confederation. Containing 5.8% of the world population in 2020, EU member states generated a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of around US$16.6 trillion in 2022, constituting approximately one sixth of global nominal GDP. Additionally, all EU states except Bulgaria have a very high Human Development Index according to the United Nations Development Programme. Its cornerstone, the Customs Union, paved the way to establishing an internal single market based on standardised legal framework and legislation that applies in all member states in those matters, and only those matters, where the states have agreed to act as one. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services and capital within the internal market; enact legislation in justice and home affairs; and maintain common policies on trade, agriculture, fisheries and regional development. Passport controls have been abolished for travel within the Schengen Area. The eurozone is a group composed of the 20 EU member states that have fully implemented the economic and monetary union and use the euro currency. Through the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the union has developed a role in external relations and defence. It maintains permanent diplomatic missions throughout the world and represents itself at the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G7 and the G20. Due to its global influence, the European Union has been described by some scholars as an emerging superpower. The EU was established, along with its citizenship, when the Maastricht Treaty came into force in 1993, and was incorporated as an international legal juridical person upon entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009. Its beginnings can be traced to the Inner Six states (Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany) at the start of modern European integration in 1948, and to the Western Union, the International Authority for the Ruhr, the European Coal and Steel Community, the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community, which were established by treaties. These increasingly amalgamated bodies grew, with their legal successor the EU, both in size through the accessions of a further 22 states from 1973 to 2013, and in power through acquisitions of policy areas. In 2012, the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The United Kingdom became the only member state to leave the EU, in 2020; ten countries are aspiring or negotiating to join it. Etymology History Background: World Wars and aftermath Internationalism and visions of European unity had been around since well before the 19th century, but gained particularly as a reaction to World War I and its aftermath. In this light first advances for the idea of European integration were made. In 1920 John Maynard Keynes proposed a European customs union for the struggling post-war European economies, and in 1923 the oldest organization for European integration, the Paneuropean Union was founded, led by Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, who later would found in June 1947 the European Parliamentary Union (EPU). As French prime minister and follower of the Paneuropean Union Aristide Briand (Nobel Peace Prize laureate for the Locarno Treaties) delivered a widely recognized speech at the League of Nations in Geneva on 5 September 1929 for a federal Europe to secure Europe and settle the historic Franco-German enmity. With large scale war being waged in Europe once again in the 1930s and becoming World War II, the question of what to fight against and what for, had to be agreed on. A first agreement was the Declaration of St James's Palace of 1941, when Europe's resistance gathered in London. This was expanded on by the 1941 Atlantic Charter, establishing the Allies and their common goals, inciting a new wave of global international institutions like the United Nations (founded 1945) or the Bretton Woods System (1944). During the 1943 Moscow Conference and Tehran Conference plans to establish joint institutions for a post-war world and Europe became increasingly an agenda. This led to a decision at the Yalta Conference in 1944 to form a European Advisory Commission, later replaced by the Council of Foreign Ministers and the Allied Control Council, following the German surrender and the Potsdam Agreement in 1945. By the end of the war European integration became seen as an antidote to the extreme nationalism which caused the war. On 19 September 1946 in a much recognized speech Winston Churchill reiterated his calls since 1930 for a "European Union" and "Council of Europe", at the University of Zürich, coincidentally parallel to the Hertenstein Congress of the Union of European Federalists, one of the then founded and later constituting members of the European Movement. One month later the French Union was installed by the new Fourth French Republic to direct the decolonization of its colonies so that they would become parts of a European community. Though by 1947 a growing rift between the western Allied Powers and the Soviet Union became evident as a result of the rigged 1947 Polish legislative election, which constituted an open breach of the Yalta Agreement. This was followed by the announcement of the Truman Doctrine on 12 March 1947, and on 4 March 1947, the signing of the Treaty of Dunkirk between France and the United Kingdom for mutual assistance, in the event of future military aggression against any of the pair. The rationale for the treaty was the threat of a potential future military attack, specifically a Soviet one in practice, though publicised under the disguise of a German one, according to the official statements. Immediately following the February 1948 coup d'état by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, the London Six-Power Conference was held, resulting in the Soviet boycott of the Allied Control Council and its incapacitation, an event marking the beginning of the Cold War. The remainder of the year 1948 marked the beginning of institutionalised European integration. Initial years and the Paris Treaty (1948‍–‍1957) The year 1948 marked the beginning of the institutionalised modern European integration. In March 1948 the Treaty of Brussels was signed, establishing the Western Union (WU), followed by the International Authority for the Ruhr. Furthermore, the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), the predecessor of the OECD, was also founded in 1948 to manage the Marshall Plan, triggering as a Soviet response formation of the Comecon. The ensuing Hague Congress of May 1948 wa.... Discover the European Union popular books. Find the top 100 most popular European Union books.