The European Union

The European Union

The European Economic Community (EEC), established under the Treaty of Rome on 25 March 1957, had six member countries - Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands as the 6 original countries to form the EEC. In 1993, the Maastricht Treaty came into force changing the name of EEC to European Union, EU in short. By then some other countries have already joined the 6 original founding countries; Denmark, Ireland and the UK in 1973, Greece in 1981, Spain and Portugal in 1986, Sweden, Finland and Austria signed up in 1995. In May 2004, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia joined the group bringing the membership to 25. However, in 1972, Norway voted to stay out. The European Union is lead by a Council of Ministers and a directly voted European parliament.

However, it became a matter of controversy on whether this sizable union, should target to eventually become the United States of Europe or just simply restricting itself to being a trading bloc. The six original member countries have inclined to favor a further political union, leading eventually to a federal Europe but however, the UK and Denmark have been consistently challenging it. In 2005, two previously strong supporters of the European project, France and the Netherlands, rejected the European Union constitution in national referenda, causing the European Union (EU) to move towards a looser rather than a closer union.