Concept|notion| and maintenance of the EU

The European Union (EU) is a supranational and intergovernmental union of 27 states in Europe.

Since the Fall of the Roman Empire the ideal of unity has been present in European culture. Since the early modern period, proposals have been made for unions of European states in some form, from the 19th century as unions of nation-states. The creation of the predecessors to the present European Union was however specific to the years immediately after the Second World War.

On May 9, 1950 Schuman presented his proposal for the creation of an integrated Europe, stating that it was indispensable to the maintenance of peaceful relations. This proposal, known as the "Schuman Declaration", is considered to be the beginning of the creation of what is now the European Union, which later chose to celebrate May 9 as Europe Day. The British were invited to participate in it, but refused on grounds of national sovereignty; thus the six went ahead alone. (See Text of the Schuman Declaration, Video of the Schuman Declaration).

The European Union is based on the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) creation. The latter institution, created by the Treaty of Paris in 1951, had six founding members: Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (the Benelux countries), West Germany, France and Italy. Its purpose was to pool the steel and coal resources of the member states under supranational authority, rendering another European war technically impossible while simultaneously spurring economic development.

The ECSC was the brainchild of French civil servant Jean Monnet and was publicised by the French foreign minister Robert Schuman.

Further efforts towards integration were immediately undertaken following the success of the ECSC. Encouraged by the United States, an attempt was made to create a European Defence Community (EDC) and a European Political Community (EPC). The EDC called for no less than the creation of a common European army, with joint high command. Its purpose was to allow troops to be raised from Germany (to face the Soviet threat) while overcoming French fears of German rearmament. The purpose of the EPC was to establish a federation of European states - replete with a bicameral parliament, executive organ, and a European Court. These attempts proved overambitious. In 1954 the French National Assembly refused to ratify the EDC treaty, which led to its abandonment; after the failure of the EDC treaty, the EPC, too, was quietly shelved. Nonetheless, the ideas behind both institutions lived on - as testified by later developments such as European Political Co-operation (also called EPC), the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) "pillar" established by the Maastricht treaty, and the European Rapid Reaction Force currently in formation. Despite the failure of the EDC and EPC, the six founding members soon tried again to further their integration.

The next major milestone was the founding of the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), both through the Treaty of Rome of 1957 (implemented January 1, 1958). The purpose of the EEC was to establish a customs union among the six founding members, based on the "four freedoms": freedom of movement of goods, services, capital and people. Euratom was created to pool the non-military nuclear resources of the states. Of the three institutions now extant - the ECSC, the EEC, and Euratom - the EEC was by far the most important, so much so that it was later renamed simply the European Community (EC).

The growth of the European Communities into what is currently the European Union consists of two parallel processes:

1) structural evolution and institutional change of the European Communities into a tighter bloc with more competences given to the supranational level, which can be called the process of European integration or the deepening of the Union.

2) enlargement of the European Communities (and later European Union) from 6 to 27 member states, which is also called the widening of the Union.