History of The European Union

History Of The European Union

The European Union is a geo-political entity covering a large portion of the European continent. It is founded upon numerous treaties and has undergone expansions that have taken it from 6 member states to 27, a majority of states in Europe.

As distinct from ideas of federation, confederation or customs union the main development in Europe depends on a supranational foundation to make war unthinkable and materially impossible and reinforce democracy enunciated by Robert Schuman and other leaders in the Europe Declaration. The principle was at the heart of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in the Treaty of Paris (1951), following the "Schuman Declaration" and the later the Treaties of Rome establishing the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC). Both the ECSC and EEC were later incorporated into the European Union while the EAEC maintains a distinct legal identity despite sharing members and institutions.

Read more about History Of The European Union:  Pre-1945: Idea of Europe, 1945–1957: Peace Forged From Cold Steel, 1958–1972: Three Communities, 1973–1993: Enlargement To Delors, 1993–2004: Creation, 2004–present: Recent History

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    Perhaps universal history is the history of the diverse intonation of some metaphors.
    Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)

    Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.
    Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)

    What has history to do with me? Mine is the first and only world! I want to report how I find the world. What others have told me about the world is a very small and incidental part of my experience. I have to judge the world, to measure things.
    Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951)

    Assassination is the perquisite of princes.
    —19th-century European court cliché.

    Should the German people lay down their arms, the Soviets ... would occupy all eastern and south-eastern Europe together with the greater part of the Reich. Over all this territory, which with the Soviet Union included, would be of enormous extent, an iron curtain would at once descend.
    Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945)