The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the European Union: The European Union (EU) is an economic and political union of 27 member states, located primarily in Europe. Committed to

regional integration Regional Integration is a process in which neighboring countries enter into an agreement in order to upgrade cooperation through common institutions and rules. The objectives of the agreement could range from economic to political to envir ...

, the EU was established by the

Treaty of Maastricht The Treaty on European Union, commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty, is the foundation treaty of the European Union (EU). Concluded in 1992 between the then-twelve member states of the European Communities, it announced "a new stage in the p ...

on 1 November 1993 upon the foundations of the pre-existing

European Economic Community The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organisation created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957,Today the largely rewritten treaty continues in force as the ''Treaty on the functioning of the European Union'', as renamed by the Lisbo ...

.; With about 445 million citizens, the EU generates an estimated 30% share (US$18.4 trillion in 2008) of the nominal

gross world product The gross world product (GWP), also known as gross world income (GWI), is the combined gross national income (previously, the "gross national product") of all the countries in the world. Because imports and exports balance exactly when consider ...

. The EU has seven principal decision-making bodies known as the Institutions of the European Union, while the adoption of laws and coordination of EU policies is the role of the Council of the European Union which currently meets in ten different configurations.

Origins

History of the European Union The European Union is a geo-political entity, created in 1993, covering a large portion of the European continent. It is founded upon numerous treaties and has undergone expansions and secessions that have taken it from six member states to 27, ...

** Ideas of European unity before 1945 ** History of the European Coal and Steel Community (1945–57) ** History of the European Communities (1958–72) ** History of the European Communities (1973–93) **

History of the European Union (1993–2004) The history of the European Union between 1993 and 2004 was the period between its creation (replacing the European Economic Community) and the 2004 Enlargement of the European Union, enlargement. The European Union was created at the dawn of t ...

** History of the European Union since 2004 * Special member state territories and the European Union

European Communities The European Communities (EC) were three international organizations that were governed by the same set of Institutions of the European Union, institutions. These were the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), the European Atomic Energy Co ...

European Coal and Steel Community The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was a European organization created after World War II to integrate Europe's coal and steel industries into a single common market based on the principle of supranationalism which would be governe ...

** European Atomic Energy Community *

Single market A single market, sometimes called common market or internal market, is a type of trade bloc in which most trade barriers have been removed (for goods) with some common policies on product regulation, and freedom of movement of the factors of pr ...

Trade bloc A trade bloc is a type of intergovernmental agreement, often part of a regional intergovernmental organization, where barriers to trade (tariffs and others) are reduced or eliminated among the participating states. Trade blocs can be stand-alo ...

and

Value-added tax A value-added tax (VAT or goods and services tax (GST), general consumption tax (GCT)) is a consumption tax that is levied on the value added at each stage of a product's production and distribution. VAT is similar to, and is often compared wi ...

Subsidiarity Subsidiarity is a principle of social organization that holds that social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate or local level that is consistent with their resolution. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' defines subsid ...

* ''See treaties below''

Identity

Symbols of Europe A number of symbols of Europe have emerged since antiquity, notably the mythological figure of '' Europa''. Several symbols were introduced in the 1950s and 1960s by the European Council. The European Communities created additional symbols fo ...

symbols of the European Union The European Union (EU) uses a number of symbols, including the Flag of Europe, Anthem of Europe, Motto of the European Union and Europe Day. These symbols have no official status based in the EU treaties, but they are in ''de facto'' use by t ...

Flag of Europe The flag of Europe or European flag consists of twelve Or (heraldry), golden stars forming a Circle of stars, circle on a Azure (heraldry), blue field. It was designed and adopted in 1955 by the Council of Europe (CoE) as a symbol for the who ...

Anthem of Europe The Anthem of Europe or European Anthem, also known as Ode to Joy, is a piece of instrumental music adapted from the prelude of the final movement of Beethoven's 9th Symphony composed in 1823, originally set to words adapted from Friedric ...

Europe Day Europe Day is a day celebrating "peace and unity in Europe" celebrated on 5 May by the Council of Europe and on 9 May by the European Union. The first recognition of Europe Day was by the Council of Europe, introduced in 1964. The European Uni ...

Structures

# Members #*

Member states A member state is a state that is a member of an international organization or of a federation or confederation. Since the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) include some members that are not sovereign states ...

#** Dependent Territories of Member States #* Enlargement #* Withdrawal #

Institutions An institution is a humanly devised structure of rules and norms that shape and constrain social behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions and ...

European Commission The European Commission (EC) is the primary Executive (government), executive arm of the European Union (EU). It operates as a cabinet government, with a number of European Commissioner, members of the Commission (directorial system, informall ...

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...

Council of the European Union The Council of the European Union, often referred to in the treaties and other official documents simply as the Council, and less formally known as the Council of Ministers, is the third of the seven institutions of the European Union (EU) a ...

Court of Justice of the European Union The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) ( or "''CJUE''"; Latin: Curia) is the Judiciary, judicial branch of the European Union (EU). Seated in the Kirchberg, Luxembourg, Kirchberg quarter of Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, this EU ins ...

European Court of Auditors The European Court of Auditors (ECA; French: ''Cour des comptes européenne'') is the supreme audit institution of the European Union (EU). It was established in 1975 in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg and is one of the Institutions of the European ...

European Central Bank The European Central Bank (ECB) is the central component of the Eurosystem and the European System of Central Banks (ESCB) as well as one of seven institutions of the European Union. It is one of the world's Big Four (banking)#International ...

European Council The European Council (informally EUCO) is a collegiate body (directorial system) and a symbolic collective head of state, that defines the overall political direction and general priorities of the European Union (EU). It is composed of the he ...

# Other bodies #*

European Committee of the Regions The European Committee of the Regions (CoR) is the European Union's (EU) assembly of local and regional representatives that provides sub-national authorities (i.e. regions, counties, provinces, municipalities and cities) with a direct voice w ...

European Economic and Social Committee The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) is a consultative body of the European Union (EU) established in 1958. It is an advisory assembly composed of representatives from employers' organization, employers' associations, workers' unio ...

European System of Central Banks The European System of Central Banks (ESCB) is an institution that comprises the European Central Bank (ECB) and the national central banks (NCBs) of all 27 member states of the European Union (EU). Its objective is to ensure price stability ...

European Investment Bank The European Investment Bank (EIB) is the European Union's investment bank and is owned by the 27 member states. It is the largest multilateral financial institution in the world. The EIB finances and invests both through equity and debt sol ...

European Investment Fund The European Investment Fund (EIF), established in 1994, is a financial institution for the provision of finance to SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises), headquartered in Luxembourg. It is part of the European Investment Bank Group. It ...

Agencies of the European Union The European Union and Euratom have agencies, decentralised independent bodies, corporate bodies and joint undertakings which are established as juridical persons through secondary EU legislation and tasked with a specific narrow field of work. ...

European Ombudsman The European Ombudsman is an inter-institutional body of the European Union that holds the institutions, bodies and agencies of the EU to account, and promotes good administration. The Ombudsman helps people, businesses and organisations facing ...

European External Action Service The European External Action Service (EEAS) is the diplomatic service in charge of executing all Foreign relations of the European Union, international relations of the European Union. The EEAS is led by the Vice-President of the European Co ...

# Related Organisations #*

European Free Trade Association The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) is a regional trade organization and free trade area consisting of four List of sovereign states and dependent territories in Europe, European states: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland. ...

European Economic Area The European Economic Area (EEA) was established via the ''Agreement on the European Economic Area'', an international agreement which enables the extension of the European Union's single market to member states of the European Free Trade Asso ...

Western European Union The Western European Union (WEU; , UEO; , WEU) was the international organisation and military alliance that succeeded the Western Union (alliance) , Western Union (WU) after the 1954 amendment of the 1948 Treaty of Brussels. The WEU implement ...

(1954-2011)

Law and policy

Treaties of the European Union The Treaties of the European Union are a set of international treaties between the European Union (EU) member states which sets out the EU's constitutional basis. They establish the various EU institutions together with their remit, procedure ...

– Founding and amending treaties (primary legislation) #*

Treaty of Paris (1951) The Treaty of Paris (formally the Treaty establishing the European Coal and Steel Community) was signed on 18 April 1951 between France, Italy, West Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, establishing the European Coal and Steel C ...

Treaty of Rome The Treaty of Rome, or EEC Treaty (officially the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community), brought about the creation of the European Economic Community (EEC), the best known of the European Communities (EC). The treaty was signe ...

(1957) #*

Merger Treaty The Merger Treaty, also known as the Treaty of Brussels, was a European treaty which unified the executive institutions of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) and the European Economic Commun ...

(1965) #*

Single European Act The Single European Act (SEA) was the first major revision of the 1957 Treaty of Rome. The Act set the European Community an objective of establishing a single market by 31 December 1992, and a forerunner of the European Union's Common Fore ...

(1986) #*

Maastricht Treaty The Treaty on European Union, commonly known as the Maastricht Treaty, is the foundation treaty of the European Union (EU). Concluded in 1992 between the then-twelve Member state of the European Union, member states of the European Communities, ...

(1992) #*

Amsterdam Treaty The Treaty of Amsterdam, officially the Treaty of Amsterdam amending the Treaty on European Union, the Treaties establishing the European Communities and certain related acts, was signed on 2 October 1997, and entered into force on 1 May 1999; i ...

(1997) #*

Treaty of Nice The Treaty of Nice was signed by European leaders on 26 February 2001 and came into force on 1 February 2003. It amended the Maastricht Treaty (or the Treaty on European Union) and the Treaty of Rome (or the Treaty establishing the European C ...

(2001) #* Treaty of Accession 2003 #* Treaty of Accession 2005 #*

Treaty of Lisbon The Treaty of Lisbon (initially known as the Reform Treaty) is a European agreement that amends the two treaties which form the constitutional basis of the European Union (EU). The Treaty of Lisbon, which was signed by all EU member states o ...

(2007) #*

Treaty of Accession 2011 The Treaty of Accession 2011 is an agreement between the member states of the European Union and Croatia concerning Croatia's accession to the EU. It was signed on 9 December 2011 in Brussels by the heads of state or government of the 27 member ...

#* Related documents #**

Schengen Agreement The Schengen Agreement ( , ) is a treaty which led to the creation of Europe's Schengen Area, in which internal border checks have largely been abolished. It was signed on 14 June 1985, near the town of Schengen, Luxembourg, by five of the t ...

#**

Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe The Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe (TCE; commonly referred to as the European Constitution or as the Constitutional Treaty) was an Ratification, unratified international treaty intended to create a consolidated constitution for ...

#**

Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (CFR) enshrines certain political, social, and economic rights for European Union (EU) citizens and residents into EU law. It was drafted by the European Convention and solemnly procla ...

# EU Policy Areas #*

Economic and Monetary Union of the European Union The economic and monetary union (EMU) of the European Union is a group of policies aimed at converging the economies of member states of the European Union at three stages. There are three stages of the EMU, each of which consists of progressi ...

(Euro) #*

European Political Cooperation The European Political Co-operation (EPC) was the common term for the co-ordination of foreign policy between member states of the European Communities (EC) from its inception in 1970 until the EPC was superseded by the new European Union's ...

Common Agricultural Policy The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is the agricultural policy of the European Commission. It implements a system of agricultural subsidies and other programmes. It was introduced in 1962 and has since then undergone several changes to reduce ...

Common Fisheries Policy The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is the fishery, fisheries policy of the European Union (EU). It sets quotas for which Member state of the European Union, member states are allowed to catch each type of fish, as well as encouraging the fishin ...

Regional policy of the European Union The Regional Policy of the European Union (EU), also referred as Cohesion Policy, is a policy with the stated aim of improving the economic well-being of region (Europe), regions in the European Union and also to avoid regional disparities. Mor ...

#* Trans-European Networks #*

Energy Energy () is the physical quantity, quantitative physical property, property that is transferred to a physical body, body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of Work (thermodynamics), work and in the form of heat and l ...

European Union law European Union law is a system of Supranational union, supranational Law, laws operating within the 27 member states of the European Union (EU). It has grown over time since the 1952 founding of the European Coal and Steel Community, to promote ...

#* ''

Acquis communautaire The Community acquis or ''acquis communautaire'' (; ), sometimes called the EU acquis, and often shortened to acquis, is the accumulated legislation, legal acts and court decisions that constitute the body of European Union law that came into ...

'' #* ''

Official Journal of the European Union The ''Official Journal of the European Union'' (the ''OJEU'') is the official gazette of record for the European Union (EU). It is published every working day in all of the official languages of the member states of the EU. Only legal acts p ...

'' #*

EU competition law In the European Union, competition law promotes the maintenance of competition within the European Single Market by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies to ensure that they do not create cartels and monopolies that would damage the ...

(see also

Antitrust Competition law is the field of law that promotes or seeks to maintain market competition by regulating anti-competitive conduct by companies. Competition law is implemented through public and private enforcement. It is also known as antitrust l ...

Cartel A cartel is a group of independent market participants who collaborate with each other as well as agreeing not to compete with each other in order to improve their profits and dominate the market. A cartel is an organization formed by producers ...

, Economics,

Microeconomics Microeconomics is a branch of economics that studies the behavior of individuals and Theory of the firm, firms in making decisions regarding the allocation of scarcity, scarce resources and the interactions among these individuals and firms. M ...

Perfect competition In economics, specifically general equilibrium theory, a perfect market, also known as an atomistic market, is defined by several idealizing conditions, collectively called perfect competition, or atomistic competition. In Economic model, theoret ...

Industrial organization In economics, industrial organization is a field that builds on the theory of the firm by examining the structure of (and, therefore, the boundaries between) firms and markets. Industrial organization adds real-world complications to the per ...

Game theory Game theory is the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions. It has applications in many fields of social science, and is used extensively in economics, logic, systems science and computer science. Initially, game theory addressed ...

) # Forms of Secondary Legislation #* Directive #*

Regulation Regulation is the management of complex systems according to a set of rules and trends. In systems theory, these types of rules exist in various fields of biology and society, but the term has slightly different meanings according to context. Fo ...

#* Recommendation # Topics of Secondary Legislation #*

Copyright law of the European Union Copyright law within the European Union is largely harmonized, although differences between member states exist. The body of law was implemented in the EU through a number of directives, which the member states need to enact into their nation ...

# Directives and Regulations of Secondary Legislation: #* ''

Societas Europaea A (, ; "European society" or "company"; plural: ; abbr. SE) is a public company registered in accordance with the European corporate law, corporate law of the European Union (EU), introduced in 2004 with the Council Regulation on the Statute ...

'' #*

Protected designation of origin The protected designation of origin (PDO) is a type of geographical indication of the European Union aimed at preserving the designations of origin of food-related products. The designation was created in 1992 and its main purpose is to designat ...

#* Unitary patent #*

Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) is a European Union regulation dating from 18 December 2006, amended on 16 December 2008 by Regulation (EC) No 1272/2008. REACH addresses the production and use of che ...

#* Directive on the enforcement of intellectual property rights #*

Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of personal data The Data Protection Directive, officially Directive 95/46/EC, enacted in October 1995, was a European Union directive which regulated the processing of personal data within the European Union (EU) and the free movement of such data. The Data Pr ...

Directive on harmonising the term of copyright protection Council Directive 93/98/EEC of 29 October 1993 harmonising the term of protection of copyright and certain related rights is a European Union directive in the field of EU copyright law, made under the internal market provisions of the Treaty of ...

Miscellaneous

Economy of the European Union The economy of the European Union is the joint economy of the member states of the European Union (EU). It is the second largest economy in the world in nominal terms, after the United States, and the third largest at purchasing power parit ...

European Neighbourhood Policy The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) is a foreign relations instrument of the European Union (EU) which seeks to tie those countries to the east and south of the European territory of the EU to the Union. These countries include some who seek ...

* European Union statistics *

Euroscepticism Euroscepticism, also spelled as Euroskepticism or EU-scepticism, is a political position involving criticism of the European Union (EU) and European integration. It ranges from those who oppose some EU institutions and policies and seek reform ...

, Europhobe *

European Union Association Agreement A European Union Association Agreement or simply Association Agreement (AA) is a treaty between the European Union (EU, or its predecessors), its Member States and a non-EU country or bloc of countries that governs bilateral relations. Areas freq ...

Pro-Europeanism Pro-Europeanism, sometimes called European Unionism, is a political position that favours European integration and membership of the European Union (EU).Krisztina Arató, Petr Kaniok (editors). ''Euroscepticism and European Integration''. Pol ...

Europhile A Europhile is a person who is fond of, admires, or loves European culture, society, history, food, music etc.List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits This is a list of the largest cities in the European Union according to the population within their city boundary. The cities listed all have populations over 300,000. The list deals exclusively with the areas within city administrative boundar ...

* Morocco–European Union relations * Sport policies of the European Union * United States of Europe *

Trade war A trade war is an economic conflict often resulting from extreme protectionism, in which states raise or implement tariffs or other trade barriers against each other as part of their commercial policies, in response to similar measures imposed ...

** Trade war over genetically modified food * Statewatch *

Supranational union A supranational union is a type of international organization and political union that is empowered to directly exercise some of the powers and functions otherwise reserved to State (polity), states. A supranational organization involves a g ...

References

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