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Concept
History of the European Union
Summary
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 and secessions that have taken it from six member states to 27, a majority of the states in Europe.
Since the beginning of the institutionalised modern European integration in 1948, the development of the European Union has been based on a supranational foundation that would "make war unthinkable and materially impossible" and reinforce democracy amongst its members as laid out by Robert Schuman and other leaders in the Schuman Declaration (1950) and the Europe Declaration (1951). This principle was at the heart of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) (1951), the Treaty of Paris (1951), and later the Treaty of Rome (1958) which established the European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC). The Maastricht Treaty (1992) created the European Union with its pillars system, including foreign and home affairs alongside the European Communities. This in turn led to the creation of the single European currency, the euro (launched 1999). The ECSC expired in 2002. The Maastricht Treaty has been amended by the treaties of Amsterdam (1997), Nice (2001) and Lisbon (2007), the latter merging the three pillars into a single legal entity, though the EAEC has maintained a distinct legal identity despite sharing members and institutions.
The known world in Ancient Greece was differentiated into three landmasses Asia, "Libya" (Africa) and Europe, giving rise to identifying the European landmass as a coherent area, a continent.
The European landmass was populated and territorialized by many long before its conceptualization as a coherent continent. But the Roman Empire, an empire built on the Hellenistic world and Alexandrian Empire, Ancient Egypt, the Levant and North Africa, became the first state to control the whole Mediterranean Basin and also large parts, particularly the Southern and Western parts of the European landmass.
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