The Story Behind the European Union

The European Union is the most successful peace project in history — and the least understood. Twenty-seven countries, 451.8 million people, one currency shared by twenty of them, and a rulebook that shapes how every major website on earth handles your data.

This brief tells the story from the beginning: the 1950 declaration that made Franco-German war materially impossible, the treaties that built the common market, the enlargements that turned six countries into twenty-seven, and the machinery — Commission, Parliament, Council, Court — that turns ideas into law. Then the rules themselves: regulations, directives, decisions, recommendations and opinions, and why the difference matters.

The PDF version includes photos from Wikimedia Commons, the enlargement chart and the full source list.

Download the full brief — typeset PDF, 7 pages, 15 cited sources, with photos from Wikimedia Commons, the enlargement chart and the complete source list.

The short answer

The European Union began on 9 May 1950 as a single sentence about coal and steel, spoken by a French foreign minister who wanted to make war between France and Germany not just unthinkable but materially impossible. Seventy-six years later, the idea governs a union of 27 countries and about 451.8 million people, with its own currency used by 20 of them, its own parliament directly elected by citizens since 1979, and a body of law that regulates everything from the strength of shower hoses to how the world's largest websites handle personal data.

Five facts carry this story:

1. It was invented as a peace project, not an economic one. The Schuman Declaration proposed pooling French and German coal and steel under a common authority so that "war between France and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible."
2. It grew from 6 to 27 members through eight waves of enlargement, the largest in 2004 when ten countries — mostly ex-communist — joined on the same day.
3. The 1992 Maastricht Treaty created the European Union itself, built on three pillars, and set the euro in motion.
4. EU law comes in exactly five flavours — regulations, directives, decisions, recommendations and opinions — and the difference between a regulation and a directive is the difference between a rule that applies everywhere at once and a target each country implements its own way.
5. Laws are made by three institutions in tension: the Commission proposes, the Parliament and Council decide on an equal footing, and the Court of Justice has ruled since the 1960s that EU law outranks national law when the two conflict.

1950: the declaration that started it

On 9 May 1950, France's foreign minister Robert Schuman read out a short declaration in the Clock Room of the Quai d'Orsay. Its proposal was disarmingly narrow: place Franco-German production of coal and steel — the two materials every war economy needed — under a common High Authority, open to other European countries.

The reasoning was geopolitical, not economic. In 1950, France and Germany had fought three wars in seventy years. Schuman's declaration argued that economic interdependence in the materials of war would force permanent cooperation in everything else. It closed with what became the EU's founding logic: the pooling of coal and steel production would "change the destinies of those regions which have long been devoted to the manufacture of munitions of war."

That date, 9 May, is celebrated annually as Europe Day, and the declaration itself is preserved and published by the EU's institutions.

1951–1957: from six countries to a common market

The declaration became the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951, signed by six countries: France, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. The same six signed the Treaties of Rome on 25 March 1957, creating the European Economic Community — a common market with free movement of goods, services, capital and people — and Euratom for atomic energy.

The hall where the treaties were signed still sits inside Rome's Musei Capitolini, and the room is preserved much as it was that day.

Enlargement: from 6 to 27

Enlargement is the EU's quiet superpower, and its history is a sequence of doors opening.

• 1973 — Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom join, taking membership from 6 to 9.
• 1981 — Greece (10).
• 1986 — Spain and Portugal (12), completing the democratic consolidation of southern Europe after their dictatorships fell.
• 1995 — Austria, Finland and Sweden (15).
• 2004 — the "big bang": ten countries in one day, mostly from the former communist bloc — Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta and Cyprus (25).
• 2007 — Bulgaria and Romania (27).
• 2013 — Croatia (28), the first of the ex-Yugoslav states.

The United Kingdom left on 31 January 2020, taking the union from 28 back to 27 — the first time the map has ever shrunk. The first direct elections to the European Parliament had been held in 1979, four years after members agreed that the assembly should be elected by citizens rather than appointed.

Each enlargement has followed the same mechanism: a country applies, must meet the political and economic conditions set by the existing members, negotiates adoption of the entire EU rulebook chapter by chapter, and joins only when every existing member agrees. The rulebook, not the promise, is the price of entry.

1992: Maastricht and the birth of the EU

By 1992 the cold war had ended, Germany had reunified, and the six-turned-twelve faced a choice about what their economic community was becoming. The Maastricht Treaty, signed on 7 February 1992, answered the question structurally: it created the European Union, organised around three pillars — the existing European Communities, a common foreign and security policy, and cooperation on justice and home affairs.

Maastricht also set the euro in motion, laying down the convergence criteria countries had to meet to join a single currency. Euro banknotes and coins entered circulation in 2002; today the euro is used by 20 EU countries, after Croatia became the twentieth member on 1 January 2023.

Not everything in the treaty story is Maastricht. The Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon treaties (1997, 2001, 2007) reformed the machinery repeatedly — most importantly, Lisbon gave the EU its current legal architecture and made the Charter of Fundamental Rights legally binding.

How a European law is actually made

This is the part most people never see, and it explains why EU regulation feels both unstoppable and strangely slow.

The process is called the ordinary legislative procedure, and its defining feature is that the European Parliament and the Council of the EU legislate as equal partners.

1. The European Commission proposes. The Commission — one commissioner per member state, nominated by national governments but required to act independently — holds the exclusive right of legislative initiative. No one else can formally table an EU law.
2. The Parliament reads, amends and votes. Its 720 members, directly elected every five years across the union, adopt a position by simple majority.
3. The Council of the EU — ministers from each national government — does the same, voting by qualified majorities that weight countries by population.
4. The two positions are reconciled through up to three readings; if they cannot agree, a joint committee tries once more.
5. The law is adopted and published in the Official Journal, in the union's 24 official languages.

Most EU legislation now passes this way, and citizens can force items onto the agenda through a European citizens' initiative. The Commission's near-monopoly on proposals is the system's famous bottleneck and its deliberate design: the founders wanted a referee with no national allegiance holding the pen first.

The five kinds of EU rules

Article 288 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union lists exactly what EU institutions can adopt: "regulations, directives, decisions, recommendations and opinions." The differences matter enormously in practice:

• Regulation — binding in its entirety, directly applicable in every member state. When the EU adopts a regulation, the same legal text becomes law in Dublin, Warsaw and Athens on the same day, with no national parliament vote required. The GDPR — the rule that reshaped how every global website handles personal data — is a regulation.
• Directive — binding on the result, but each country chooses how to implement it in national law within a deadline. Directives are why cookie banners look different in Berlin and Paris: same European goal, national execution.
• Decision — binding only on those it addresses: a specific company, a member state, an individual.
• Recommendation and opinion — not binding. They signal what the institutions think and want, without legal force.

Underneath all five sits the doctrine of primacy: since a 1964 Court of Justice ruling, where EU law and national law conflict, EU law prevails — including over national constitutions. The treaties never stated it; the Court established it, and the member states later accepted it explicitly in a declaration attached to the Lisbon treaty. Member states did not write this into the treaties at first; the Court established it and the member states eventually accepted it. It remains the single most consequential legal idea in the union, and the one national sovereignty debates keep returning to.

The single market, the euro, Schengen

Three structures do most of the daily work:

• The single market guarantees the four freedoms — goods, services, capital and people move without internal barriers — the core economic objective the Treaties of Rome set out to achieve. It is the EU's core economic achievement and the reason a company in Warsaw can bid for a contract in Lisbon under the same rules.
• The euro is used by 20 of the 27 members. The newest adopter, Croatia, joined on 1 January 2023 at a fixed rate of 7.53450 kuna to the euro. The countries outside it — including Sweden and Poland — keep their own currencies and monetary policy.
• Schengen abolished internal border checks. As of 2026 it counts 29 states: 25 of the 27 EU members plus Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. Bulgaria and Romania, whose air and sea borders had been included earlier, became full members on 1 January 2025 when land border checks were lifted. Ireland opts out, by choice and geography.

Who runs it

Five institutions share the work, deliberately mismatched in legitimacy:

• European Commission (Brussels) — proposes and enforces laws, one commissioner per state.
• European Parliament (Strasbourg and Brussels) — 720 directly elected members, returned every five years.
• Council of the EU (Brussels) — national ministers, negotiating and voting by country.
• European Council (Brussels) — heads of state and government, setting political direction.
• Court of Justice (Luxembourg) — one judge per member state, ensuring the treaties mean the same thing in every language and every country.

The design is intentional friction: the appointed Commission guards the European interest, the elected Parliament guards citizens, the Council guards governments, and none can legislate alone.

Where it goes next

Enlargement is live again. On 12 and 13 October 2026 the EU opened new negotiation clusters with Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova — the most concrete accession progress since Ukraine and Moldova were recognised as candidates in 2022. The mechanics are unchanged from 1957: adopt the entire rulebook, satisfy all 27, then join.

Bottom line

The European Union is a peace treaty that became a legal system. Its founders solved a military problem with an economic instrument and accidentally built the world's largest single market and its most ambitious shared rulebook. The rules it wrote — from the four freedoms to the regulation that made cookie banners universal — now shape commerce far beyond its borders, which is precisely why the world watches its politics so closely.

Sources

• europa.eu: Schuman Declaration, May 1950
• Britannica: Treaty of Rome
• EC: History of enlargement, from 6 to 27 members
• EP Factsheets: The Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties
• EC: Types of EU law
• europa.eu: Types of legislation
• EUR-Lex: Article 288 TFEU
• EUR-Lex: Precedence of European law
• EP: Ordinary legislative procedure
• Council: Schengen land borders with Bulgaria and Romania
• ECB: Croatia introduces the euro
• Council: accession conferences with Montenegro, Albania, Ukraine and Moldova
• Eurostat: EU population projections
• EC: 2024 European Parliament election, 720 seats
• EP: 40 years of EU enlargement